Hello, I want to buy Rademacher start2smart. has anybody is working with this product? can it be connected to HA?
Also I noticed something (marked below) in the comparison table, which I don’t understand what it means. Bridge (smart2start) cant be connected by wifi? If someone knows what it means, could you please share?
It seems to work somehow. See here https://community.home-assistant.io/t/rademacher-homepilot-in-home-assistant/204935
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As @starob said, there is an undocumented JSON-RPC API, which you can control via the REST integrations. Take a look into the linked thread to see how to setup password authentication.
Basically, you open up the web UI of the Rademacher Hub, edit the URL so it’s http://rademacher/devices and take a look at the JSON, the values with “CMD” in them can generally be used to control devices, while “CURR_” or “CFG” values represent the current config.
I only own their belt winders and they work flawlessly. Keep in mind that querying the data is pull-based, so changes sent to the API may be reflected inside Home Assistant after 20sec-60sec.
As for the smart thermostats, a user sent me the JSON and I took a look, looks like you can control them just fine, although it might be a bit more limited in terms of setting automations inside the Homepilot. For that, I’d just use the Generic Thermostat integration.
Generally, I think their devices are really expensive (especially their Hubs used to be really pricey), but I haven’t had any issues with it so far, so there’s that.
Depending on the type of device you want to buy, there might be better alternatives, let us know what you’re up to and we might be able to give you a few hints.
If you do decide to buy it, post about it here so we can figure out how exactly to control the devices.
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thanks for the reply.
I am still deciding weather i should buy this or not. I don’t like the idea of having another HUB in my home, just for few window shutters. But this is the only one i found so far.
I want to replace the following with something with motor that i can control with HA.
I don’t know any other alternative to be honest. If you have any other cheaper option that can be controlled by HA, i am open to it.
As far as I know, there are products available from “Schellenberg”, however you’d need to buy the devices plus a seperate module for each for remote control (plus the hub for them).
There are other manufacturers around, each with their own weird remote control system.
The major advantage of the Rademacher devices imo is that each device acts as a relay for commands as well, so there’s no way one belt winder doesn’t receive it’s command, also they are really well made and look nice compared to the cheap look of some other devices.
You won’t need the pricey models either, I’ve equipped my entire house with the cheapest ones (sometimes they are on sale on bueromarkt-ag) since I have sun / weather sensors in Home Assistant and having them + a timer in each belt winder would be unnecessary.
Sometimes they show up on mydealz as well, keep an eye out for that. Watch out though, some are using DECT for use with a Fritz!BOX.
EDIT: If you are looking to save a buck and the looks aren’t as important, you could just buy the cheapest model of belt winder you can find and use an ESP01, flash it with ESPHome and wire up 2 transistors to the UP and DOWN button of the device. You’d probably need good WiFi reception in your entire house for that, but that’s the cheapest way I can think of 
If you would use Home Assistant you would have multiple choices, for example Shelly 2.5 or any of the following devices together with the Tasmota firmware: https://templates.blakadder.com/cover.html or DIY ESP 8266 based solutions with ESPHOME as fedot said. That’s the benefit of using an open solution instead of a propriety one.
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Yes, however since the device is basically a plastic box with a motor I doubt that you’ll be able to fit in a Shelly device, also you’d need to power it somehow, which would be a little easier and cheaper with an ESP01
@fetdot Ah I see. I Thought he is going to install electricity and cabling to replace the manual box.
Well, in that case you could just go for an actual shutter motor (Rolladenmotor in Germany) rather than a belt winder (Gurtwickler), since this is basically a motor with a tube where the shutter blinds wrap around, much nicer, you don’t need any belts anymore, however a lot of work 
i looked at “Schellenberg”, they are also expensive. compared to them, rademacher seems to be a better deal to me.
at the moment I cant spend too much time on this also, so ESP way is no go.
nevertheless I just ordered the hub and this one. i will test and decide if I will keep it or not.
thanks for your help 
Hi arifroni,
not sure if this helps as it’s a bit old, but the question seemed to be not answered yet.
The bridge does not have Wifi on board. You need to connect via network cable.
Best regards, Sven
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Thanks, I found out later and bought the bridge. it seemed to me they are asking a lot of money for wifi functionality and others that I don’t need.
Another missing feature in the smart2start hub is the integrated automations. Until recently I had the old version 1 hub and used the timer feature of the hub instead of HA automations. That was for one major reason - and that is the fact that the controllers have buttons for activating and deactivating timers etc. from the device. This came in handy when I was traveling so my wife could decide whether the timers are active or not directly from the device manually. Unfortunately, my hub died last week and I have now installed the pyduofern integration and plugged in the DuoFern stick directly into my RasPi to control them directly. That works fine and I can create automations in HA. But, I lost the ability to manually enable/disable timers from the device. If I could register the status of those buttons on the device, I could use that to switch on and off HA automations. But, I haven’t figured out how to do that yet.
good point. didn’t thought about that. actually i forgot about those buttons at all 
I installed a tablet with a HA dashboard, mainly for my wife to control stuff, she doesn’t like doing these from phone. perhaps you can also go in that direction. Its really easy to control basic stuff or see some status. And also makes you walk a bit, instead of doing it from phone/desktop 