3 ms·

Motorised blinds has been the game changer for me. I never want to adjust blinds, but natural light is nice. Now my blinds automatically go up at 8.30, and clo

by XorNot 3y ago

Motorised blinds has been the game changer for me. I never want to adjust blinds, but natural light is nice. Now my blinds automatically go up at 8.30, and close at sundown and I don't have to think about it - but my rooms are pleasantly exactly how o want them at all times.

throwawaydhshs 3y ago
So you mind me asking how you set that up, or what you bought? Have they been reliable?
- XorNot 3y ago
  I mean in my case I wouldn't broadly recommend my approach: I bought these https://www.zemismart.com/products/zm25tq-2-25 https://www.zemismart.com/products/zm25tq-2-25 and then chip-swapped them with ESP8266s. That's definitely not a casual thing but... What I'm most happy about is how I got them hardwired - I notched my cornice and slid an archetrave (narrow) light switch up into the cornice on a mounting block, caulked around it, and then ran a thin bit of surface conduit down to another slim junction box next to the blind. You can "see" that the power is there, but it blends nicely and means the blinds are powered off my lighting circuit - no batteries to worry about, and a shutoff in the room if I ever change out the motors. Motor-wise I'm happy so far - the limits work, and it's been set and forget with Home Assistant driving them through ESPHome. Unfortunately the motor is a Realtak-based chip, not Beken, so no Tuya-cloudcutter exploit exists to get ESPHome on their wirelessly. If I was doing it again from scratch I'd try and find something easier to de-cloud. As it is since I know the motors fit and know how to open them up, we've got a bunch more we're planning to do since we have some really big windows we'd need multiple blinds to cover, and we just never considered it practical till we did this. EDIT: Basically it's a home automation upgrade I've been incredibly happy with the outcome for, but man if Tuya would let go of the lock-in aspirations then it would become dead-easy to recommend to people.
  - averageRoyalty 3y ago
    I've also been looking at hard wired blind motors I can control with an ESP8266. Did you write/record anything online about the chip swapping, or can you recommend any resources? Did you end up deciding on something easier to decloud for your future ones? Thanks!
j45 3y ago
It's very worth motorized blinds especially if you have a lot of windows. Every setting you do manually throughout a day or season can be automated. Tie it in with movie mode to close everything, etc. Luvolite and their rebranded partners is a decent bang for the buck: https://www.louvolite.com/ https://www.louvolite.com/ I hear Ikea is worth looking at too.
- smeej 3y ago
  One of the things I'm actually worried about is that there are several things in my house that I don't think could be automated, at least not within the parameters available to me as a renter. I do have two accordion blinds I raise and lower daily, but only two. One wall of my house is a giant sliding glass door with floor-length curtains, though, which are as manual as it gets. They don't even have a stick to guide them. I just grab an edge and pull. I don't think my landlord would appreciate it if I mount a whole different track, but I guess it might be different if he doesn't find out. My heater is my biggest concern, though. It's a propane-fed floor unit (house is very small, as I mentioned). It's controlled by walking over and pushing buttons on the top of it. It has no remote. The thermostat is part of the unit itself. Turning power to the unit itself off and on would kill the pilot light, never mind that in the winter I can't have it go off. I just want it to go from 65 while I'm home down to 55 while I'm not. It only takes a couple minutes to warm the house (again, house is quite small), but the pipes would freeze if I let it get any colder. And that's where I come back to, "How inconvenient is it, really, to open my curtains in the morning and turn the temp down when I walk out the door?" The heater is even adjacent to the door.
  - j45 3y ago
    It sounds like your setup works for you. In other cases a room can't keep it's temperature stable and might need the blinds open or closed to help regulate the temperature.

by XorNot 3y ago

throwawaydhshs 3y ago

So you mind me asking how you set that up, or what you bought? Have they been reliable?

XorNot 3y ago
I mean in my case I wouldn't broadly recommend my approach: I bought these https://www.zemismart.com/products/zm25tq-2-25 https://www.zemismart.com/products/zm25tq-2-25 and then chip-swapped them with ESP8266s. That's definitely not a casual thing but... What I'm most happy about is how I got them hardwired - I notched my cornice and slid an archetrave (narrow) light switch up into the cornice on a mounting block, caulked around it, and then ran a thin bit of surface conduit down to another slim junction box next to the blind. You can "see" that the power is there, but it blends nicely and means the blinds are powered off my lighting circuit - no batteries to worry about, and a shutoff in the room if I ever change out the motors. Motor-wise I'm happy so far - the limits work, and it's been set and forget with Home Assistant driving them through ESPHome. Unfortunately the motor is a Realtak-based chip, not Beken, so no Tuya-cloudcutter exploit exists to get ESPHome on their wirelessly. If I was doing it again from scratch I'd try and find something easier to de-cloud. As it is since I know the motors fit and know how to open them up, we've got a bunch more we're planning to do since we have some really big windows we'd need multiple blinds to cover, and we just never considered it practical till we did this. EDIT: Basically it's a home automation upgrade I've been incredibly happy with the outcome for, but man if Tuya would let go of the lock-in aspirations then it would become dead-easy to recommend to people.
- averageRoyalty 3y ago
  I've also been looking at hard wired blind motors I can control with an ESP8266. Did you write/record anything online about the chip swapping, or can you recommend any resources? Did you end up deciding on something easier to decloud for your future ones? Thanks!

j45 3y ago

It's very worth motorized blinds especially if you have a lot of windows. Every setting you do manually throughout a day or season can be automated. Tie it in with movie mode to close everything, etc. Luvolite and their rebranded partners is a decent bang for the buck: https://www.louvolite.com/ https://www.louvolite.com/ I hear Ikea is worth looking at too.

smeej 3y ago
One of the things I'm actually worried about is that there are several things in my house that I don't think could be automated, at least not within the parameters available to me as a renter. I do have two accordion blinds I raise and lower daily, but only two. One wall of my house is a giant sliding glass door with floor-length curtains, though, which are as manual as it gets. They don't even have a stick to guide them. I just grab an edge and pull. I don't think my landlord would appreciate it if I mount a whole different track, but I guess it might be different if he doesn't find out. My heater is my biggest concern, though. It's a propane-fed floor unit (house is very small, as I mentioned). It's controlled by walking over and pushing buttons on the top of it. It has no remote. The thermostat is part of the unit itself. Turning power to the unit itself off and on would kill the pilot light, never mind that in the winter I can't have it go off. I just want it to go from 65 while I'm home down to 55 while I'm not. It only takes a couple minutes to warm the house (again, house is quite small), but the pipes would freeze if I let it get any colder. And that's where I come back to, "How inconvenient is it, really, to open my curtains in the morning and turn the temp down when I walk out the door?" The heater is even adjacent to the door.
- j45 3y ago
  It sounds like your setup works for you. In other cases a room can't keep it's temperature stable and might need the blinds open or closed to help regulate the temperature.