I’ve recently moved to a new place and have a couple of windows I want to install smart blinds, so I’m looking for suggestions.
Currently there are no blinds, no curtains, nothing. I have a zigbee network (mostly Aqara) and a thread network (mostly Eve). Given the frustration about the state of Thread and Matter, I currently prefer purchasing z2m compatible devices. Ideally the motor operation is rather silent.
The Ikea Fyrtur would probably be an option, if there were some options regarding the fabric. I want something translucent, ideally with a reflection layer on the outside. I want to keep out the direct sunshine and heat in the summer, without completely darkening the room.
Can anyone suggest a solution, either non-retrofit or – in case there are very good reasons for it – a retrofit solution? Thanks!
EDIT: I’m based in Europe, so a company selling to Europe without high shipping costs or import taxes would be great.
I recently replaced all my blinds with the SmartWings motorized shades and have been extremely happy with the quality of the blind as well as the integration with HA. I got all mine as Z-Wave but they have multiple options, including Matter over Thread, WiFi and I think some form of Zigbee (but you would have to dive deeper on that).
They come with a very long lasting battery - so far my first one of these has run for several months with multiple actions every day and is now at just 42% battery. Prior to this I tried a few other smart shades that were total junk, but these have been very good.
Thanks. I was just looking at the smartwings website, trying to figure out a way to switch from inch to centimetres in the online store, as they don’t have a country selector. Regarding these shades, can they also be accessed manually? Do they have a chain at the side? I have a child that should be able to open/close the shades, preferably manually, as otherwise he might push the buttons on the remote all day long. Also, how silent is the operation? If you’re asleep next to the shades and someone opens it (e.g. one parent still asleep, the other awake), would you wake up from the noise?
Oh, no manual, sigh. My child might accept that, but my partner won’t so easily. She’s not very much into home automation. Let’s see if someone can suggest a hybrid solution.
The only hybrid I know of is the ThirdReality version of the shade that had buttons on the bottom of the shade to allow you to raise or lower it. Personally I hated the ThirdReality solution, it was a constant battle with not opening or closing to the proper height and incorrect reporting to HA.
You have to consider that these are motors, you can’t have a drawstring AND a motor, if you want a motor then you have to have a button or some way to go through disconnecting the drawstring to override the motor operation.
Oh yes, I agree, that’s a challenge I haven’t thought about. A while back I was looking into the HomeKit smart shades from Eve “MotionBlinds”, they have a pull chord and I believe it’s something like “pull once to open, pull twice to close, pull again to stop”. So they work even when the HA instance is down or the zigbee mesh has issues. That’s probably my minimum requirement, something that works locally. Although that won’t yet solve the issue with the child wanting to operate the shades too.
I will need to find out if the remote control supplied by smartwings has a direct binding to the motor, so that the motor can be controlled directly from the remote but also from HA. I recently heard this kind of direct binding is a feature some Zigbee devices provide (which was new to me, coming from Thread/HomeKit), but I haven’t looked into it yet.
The remote operates totally independent of the automation. If it were me, and it’s not but if it were, I would get a wallmote for this purpose, throw the blind remote in a drawer for “offline” use and use a scene on the wallmote to open/close the shades (that way you don’t have to have HA running), then you could use HA to control how often that it works or when - to prevent the little one from playing with the buttons too much.
Having a remote for (rare) local use and additionally a wallmote (that is only allowed by HA to change the blinds settings e.g. once per minute) is a very smart solution, thanks. And I’ve learned a new word: “wallmote”.
Haha, it’s not a term, but rather a product (my bad for not using proper caps). There are two varieties, both are battery operated and Z-Wave (so you might need a dongle if you go this route, but there are Zigbee remotes too) and I really like them. The quad is touch sensitive and accepts a variety of swipe actions as well as having four buttons to use (actually 16 since they also support long presses, double taps, triple taps and this doesn’t include all the swipe/gesture actions too).
