I have some apartment window shutter blinds, that I would like to make smart (eventually get into HA, via cloud would be fine for me for now). Instead of installing something (like a Shelly) behind the existing mechanical wall switches, my idea was to just replace them, as they anyway aren’t great and I wouldn’t mind replacing them with something slightly more modern looking.
The shutters originally came with very simple mechanical switches (by Gira), which simply passed current from L on to L1 or L2, depending on which of the old switches (UP/DOWN) was active. I don’t know anything about the motor that is installed.
I found a cheap “Smart Curtain Switch with percentage display”, it looks like this:
So I installed the device, and the manual shutter control immediately does not work.
The device powers up, and I can connect to my WiFi and the Smart Life cloud/app/ecosystem without issues in a few minutes.
But pressing UP/DOWN, either on the touch glass, or in the app, gives two audible relay switches (<50ms apart) and then it shows the roller as fully open or closed.
It sounds like it immediately determines that the shutter has reached its final position.
That seems like it would just not be compatible with the shutters I have installed here. If it wasn’t for… the calibration mode!
Because when I open the calibration mode in Smart Life, it makes the curtain move up and down for a couple of seconds: in some kind of odd sequence, maybe: “30cm down, 20cm up, 30cm down, 20cm up, 30cm down, stop” (I did not do a precise write-up, and had to uninstall the device for now)
During this sequence, I believe the relay can only be heard switching once at every step, which would make sense.
So it is able to affect the shutter in theory! Just at no point did I manage to make the manual UP/DOWN buttons have any effect on the shutters.
Any ideas? Are there different shutter technologies, different ‘protocols’? (I don’t see how, honestly, given how simple the existing switches are.) What’s different between the manual mode and the calibration mode, that could make the former fail and the latter work?
Has anybody experienced something similar? I mean clearly the device is just cheap and crappy, but it also just needs to switch two different relays, so the operation is also quite simple. If I order another similar device, should I expect different results?
The (mis)behavior is so oddly specific, that I feel like the root cause should be discernable from the observations.
