12 ms·

$30 Homebrew Automated Blinds Opener (2024)

329 points by busymom0 1y ago

allenrb 1y ago
Would measuring motor current be a better way to determine torque? Not an expert but seems like you could sense voltage across a fairly small shunt to do it.
- 01100011 1y ago
  That's how we did it when I worked on a gate-arm/access control system. I'd monitor current and if a spike occurred I'd back the arm up because it likely hit something.
- cpgxiii 1y ago
  Motor current is a workable, but generally unsatisfactory, proxy for torque when using heavily geared motors. Far better to measure output torque directly if you can, which is what's being done here using what is essentially a series elastic mechanism (itself a very common way of implementing torque sensing). To elaborate more, current sensing is only "better" in an ease-of-implementation sense, in that a lot of motor drivers already have current sensing built in/easily added. For some applications this is good-enough, but in terms of estimating "real number" torque from current, it can take a lot of work to characterize for geared motors.
  - buescher 1y ago
    Motor current is an excellent way to measure torque and is what is done in real-world settings all the time. As a hobbyist you might have to settle for relative torque if you aren't in a position to characterize a motor or you don't have manufacturer's data for it.
    - cpgxiii 1y ago
      I wouldn't say excellent. Motor current->torque is well correlated for motors in isolation, or with very low gear ratio. Not so with higher gear ratios. Can the current value be used to make control decisions for the motor? Yes. Does the current give you torque in Nm? No. In the robotics world this is sometimes distinguished between actuators that report "effort" (i.e. a current-derived estimate) and actuators that report torque (i.e. actual torque sensing or direct-drive with current sensing). Both can be useful, but "effort" is not torque.
      - buescher 1y ago
        Current will never directly give you torque in Nm which is a straw man argument - you will always have to know the motor constant, input voltage, coil resistance, and gear ratio to back out torque. That's characterizing the motor. Yeah, that's a lot of work for a hobbyist, but it's not at all unreasonable to consider a motor an excellent torque transducer - that's what it does.
        cpgxiii 1y ago
        If the current->torque behavior of motors with gearboxes could be generally well characterized, the entire distinct market sector of "cobots" would not exist because every industrial robotics vendor would have long had good torque modelling on their actuators. As it stands, Universal Robots (and likely their clones) do use current->torque characterization for their actuators (which, amusingly, is then stored on a robot-specific USB drive or SD card), and their torque sensing is shit. Shit enough that for any useful force/torque application you still need a separate force/torque sensor. Schunk, for some of their electric parallel grippers with "force" feedback, only characterizes them at a single velocity and there is significant error in the force estimate at any other speed. Good current->torque characterization of a complete actuator is so difficult that approximately no vendors in the automation space are willing to do it.
        Karliss 1y ago
        The main keywords here are high gear ratio and cheap parts. I am not making universal claims about all use cases. For most sane designs, sure electric motors are great at converting energy into torque. Normally you would want most of the electric energy to be turned into useful work. Which implies that electric power directly correlates with mechanical power or torque*speed. The same can't always be said about gearboxes, especially for some of those targeted at hobby/toy use cases with crazy gear ratios like 1000:1 or higher. Gear ratio can be so high that you will strip the gears or make the shaft connection slip long before you can apply sufficient torque to slow down the dc motor which is almost free spinning and spending most of it's energy to overcome friction in first few gearbox stages instead of doing useful work. In a toy or hobby project when you want something to spin slowly it might not matter that the gearbox is <10% efficient if it allows you to reuse same cheap brushed DC motor as hundreds of other toys. Increased torque is partially a side effect of slowing down the tiny motor not the primary goal, although at those slower speeds you probably want slightly higher torque but nowhere near as much as what the gear ratio gives in theory. Even some non toy use cases like cheap home appliances might occasionally use crappy inefficient gearboxes and dumbest electronics possible, especially if the 1-3W motor isn't main consumer of power. There might not even be motor controller or MCU to monitor the current. It's not always question of lot of work for hobbyist, as it is result of using cheap of the shelf parts and modules which are optimized with different goal in mind and give very poor signal to noise ratio. Doesn't matter how much characterization you do if the change in temperature, grease viscosity and distribution, plastic flex produces higher variance in motor load than any force you can apply to final gearbox stage. I guess the more careful choice of suitable combination of parts from more specialized stores can be considered "lot of work for hobbyist" compared to picking first result on amazon or whatever you found in your junk bin so your argument still stands. Of course high gear ratio or slow speed doesn't always mean inefficient gearboxes. There are solutions for slow rotation with or without high gear ratio which are reasonably efficient thus allowing to use motor current for estimating torque. And any serious or well designed equipment will use them. But that usually means more complex gearbox, motor controller or purpose built electric motors all of which is either more expensive or require high MOQ orders from manufacturers.
    - numpad0 1y ago
      There was a news story few days ago that Sony is launching an Ethernet controlled smart motor with integral reducer for robotics applications, and it has encoders on both sides of the reducer plus torque on output shaft. There's nothing so far on the English side of the public Internet about it, at all. ... so I doubt motor torque be end all be all. Especially when Sony does it like that.
theywillnvrknw 1y ago
Sorry, I had to post this :| if Apple made window blinds... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv6EMd8dlQk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv6EMd8dlQk
neilv 1y ago
What are the child safety considerations to be careful of, with blinds, and with openers? (I recall seeing warning stickers and design changes on ordinary miniblinds. I suspect that one of the changes involved having multiple pull cords be separate and loose, rather than a fastened together or a single looped cord. But I'd guess that's not the only safety design decision.)
- madaxe_again 1y ago
  I think the principle two things are “they can’t pull it off the wall and onto themselves” and “they can’t hang themselves”. With automatic openers you add “they can’t get snarled up/lose a finger in the mechanism” and “they can’t electrocute themselves”. I went extremely belt and braces with our blind opener - but it is toddler proof. Attached the lower end of the cord to the ceiling, attached a pulley that hangs on the cord, hung a 1kg weight from it, and used a solenoid from a broken linktap valve to pull a pin that allows the weight to fall and pull the cord. Even with the blinds open the whole assemblage is entirely out of her reach, and it goes for the opposite effect to the poster’s implementation - blinds slam open in about half a second with a quiet whirr, as I prefer a jarring wakeup, and my wife would sleep through Armageddon. Reset is manual, but that’s fine, closing them is an optional and trivial activity.
  - toxik 1y ago
    What in Rube Goldberg is this setup?
    - madaxe_again 1y ago
      Heath Robinson, in fact, as I’m British.
- AStonesThrow 1y ago
  What are the safety considerations of smart blinds opening up a bedroom at inopportune moments, such as children playing outside while you're having sex or changing clothes? Is there a lockout mode for "I/we are not decent" or do the blinds just sort of majestically reveal the bedroom to your backyard/parking lot observers like curtains opening on a feature film?
AnotherGoodName 1y ago
Fwiw automated blinds in the bedroom are a 100% no brainer benefit. It's wonderful and better than an alarm clock with 0 mental load (set the times to open close across the week once and then never think about them again, you can keep the weekend manual if you like). As in a lot of home automation actually makes things worse. Replacing a convenient light switch with an app? 100% terrible idea and actually makes things inconvenient, don't automate those. But the blinds, specifically those in your bedroom? Do it! One of those life hacks that's really not that expensive and makes your life better with 0 cognitive load after initial setup.
- dzhiurgis 1y ago
  You are making assumption I want to wake up that early. Quite opposite - I’m searching for way to completely black out the room since kids will wake up with slightest shred of light, far before daycare starts. And I’m not even living if far lats. But yeah I still want them for convenience. Problem is I don’t want cables dangling around curtains and battery options are limited.
  - Etheryte 1y ago
    This comment makes no sense. You choose when you want your automated blinds to open, if you don't want to wake up early, just don't set them to open early?
    - ranger_danger 1y ago
      This comment also makes no sense... they said completely black out a room, which blinds alone cannot do.
      - jeroenhd 1y ago
        Blinds bolted on to the window frame can't, but blinds integrated into the window frame definitely can.
      - Etheryte 1y ago
J_Shelby_J 1y ago
I just want to share that these are by far the best home automation you can have. I love my smart lights, hacked together smart humidifier, smart fans (the vornado dc fans with outlet switches), intake air pump, and air quality monitoring. But nothing has the quality of life impact of smart blinds. It’s the best, and probably only, way to reliably keep your sleep schedule in sync. Smart lightbulbs - four of the brightest you can buy - are nothing compared to a window on a cloudy day.
- threatofrain 1y ago
  Could we hear more about your home automation stack? I'm looking to get into this myself.
  - joshvm 1y ago
    Can't speak for OP, but just get Home Assistant running and play around. It'll work in Docker in anything, but it's a good use for an old Raspberry Pi. There isn't much more of a stack than that, and HA is by far the most polished OSS solution. It's got some sharp edges - every time I've done a major auto-update it's broken something critical. You can run it alongside other controllers like the Hue Bridge, which is nice to have as a backup (since 90% of what most people connect is smart lighting). Probably the most useful simple automation I have is an motion activated dim light in the bathroom at night, but that's using Hue. Then look at ESPHome, which is an ecosystem for making your own DIY sensors and controllers that can feed into HA. For example we have a Sensirion air quality sensor that triggers a smart switch connected to a fan if the particulate level gets high when cooking. You can go a very long way with on/off to control non-smart devices, and your sensors don't need to be particularly accurate (like absolute PM2.5) as long as the conditon you trigger on is repeatable. The only thing to think about is what hardware ecosystem makes sense for you. For example there's at least four different competing standards for connectivity (WiFi, Zigbee, Z-Wave, Matter/Thread, etc). So getting a Zigbee dongle isn't a bad idea because then you can connect any IKEA or Hue device (among others).
    - asdefghyk 1y ago
TheKnack 1y ago
I have these on all of my blinds and they are amazing. You can sometimes get them on sale for $50-60 each. They come with a solar panel that keeps them charged. You can add a hub that makes them work with HomeKit. https://us.switch-bot.com/products/switchbot-blind-tilt https://us.switch-bot.com/products/switchbot-blind-tilt
xyst 1y ago
Person just wanted to automate a few "dumb" appliances but ended up building his own system (software and hardware) to do this. I wish I had time to bike shed like this. Just learning, tinkering, and enjoying life.
- quesera 1y ago
  That's puttering, tinkering, or experimenting. It's a good thing. Bikeshedding is wasting time on trivial and pointless efforts or discussions. It's a bad thing. :) https://phk.freebsd.dk/sagas/bikeshed/ https://phk.freebsd.dk/sagas/bikeshed/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality
asimpletune 1y ago
Does anyone know if something like this already exists for the heavy duty, built-in shutters they have in Italy? The kind that close and form a barrier over the window and are operated with a flat roll of fabric from inside.
- notpushkin 1y ago
  I’ve seen those somewhere in the Southeast Asia so I think I’ve got what you’re saying. The challenge would be to replace the stopper you currently have (because it’s hard to work around it with a motor) and replace it with something you can activate electrically.
- patrickk 1y ago
  They also have them in Germany. I used to have the manual "flat roll of fabric" in the past, and upgraded the entire rollers in the house to electric ones (I don't know if it's possible to only upgrade the fabric roll -> electric switch without upgrading the entire shutter). After you have electric-controlled rollers, you can control them via any automation you want by installing a "Shelly Plus 2PM" device behind each switch. I connect the Shellys to home assistant, and from there, trigger all the rollers to go down a certain number of minutes after sunset. They all rise at a certain time in the morning. You can always trigger them manually too, of course. ChatGPT can spit out very complex YAML for HA if you want to make life easier, your only limit is your imagination.
- lultimouomo 1y ago
  Yes, the keyword you are looking for is "tapparella motorizzata".
tayo42 1y ago
I need to figure something like this out. My bedroom has this arch window about 3-4ft wide that's over 10ft high that I've permanently blacked out so I can sleep in. I'd love an easy way to open it and get light in the day though.
ge96 1y ago
Funny I used that white magnetic encoder and now I see it everywhere
vanschelven 1y ago
I wondered what an "homebrew automated" was and by which mechanism it could blind the person who opened it...
ThrowawayTestr 1y ago
I love the choice of enclose.
KennyBlanken 1y ago
"I doubled up the relays feeding the main motor and the heating coil, which gives a lot more headroom on the amperage" ...That's not how that works. One of the relays is going to close first, and those set of contacts will take all the load. Similarly, one set is going to bear all the drama from breaking the connection (and with the motor, there's inductive kickback.) The correct way to do this is to look up the motor rating for your relay and then size accordingly, not to do dumb shit like "oh I'll just double up these two relays." Of course he fucks up and uses a resistor from mains to logic, too. Mains and logic should never, ever, ever come anywhere near each other. They're supposed to be physically isolated on a PCB, cutouts in the board, even. Don't fuck with mains / appliances / HVAC / household water supply if you don't know what you're doing. This guy has no fucking idea what he's doing, and some winter day he's going to come home to a house that's 100 degrees inside and a flooded first floor (notice he didn't connect the water leak sensor?) Home insurance is scummy, annoying, difficult and weasely in the best of circumstances. The second they figure out you had some chewing gum and duct tape hodgepodge running your dishwasher and that's what caused the flood, they will not only refuse to pay, they'll cancel your coverage on the spot. Then you find out the joys of not having home insurance coverage on a house with a mortgage. Edit: Holy christ I missed this part: "It seemed to be due to the push-on jumper cables either becoming too loose after years of jiggling or perhaps oxidizing and self-insulating a bit." That is how you start a fire, people.
- shmoozername 1y ago
  Looks to me like he maintained proper mains separation except for the one assembly mistake he admitted to (which wasn't catastrophic, obviously -- his wiring color choices look good for avoiding catastrophic errors). The relay board he's using (I recognize it) is rated for mains voltages, and power-wise is ok-ish for the task (I wouldn't choose it for a commercial product, but for his exact scenario--see below--it's probably ok). Doubling up the relays works fine for the main concern, which is overheating via sustained high amperage, which is how fires start. Surge risk is usually just welding the relay, not starting a fire (unless you're way over spec, which he is not), and it almost always welds shut, not open, so less likely to fail silently into the scenario where it's running on one relay and the sustained amperage becomes a risk, and instead into behaving obviously badly as is typical when motherboards go out (at which point you turn it off and rectify, just like a commercial one). He mentions the whole unit is isolated from mains when not in use, so in that respect it's safer than a commercial one as long as he doesn't run it when away from home/asleep. Again, not a viable commercial design, but not insane with proper supervision either. I was curious how you knew about the leak sensor so I did a quick search, and see you're just making things up to complain about -- that model has a turbidity sensor (which I suspect are the NC wires you noticed), but no leak sensor. Oh no! His water might be too turbid! Also the fill valve is wired inline with the float switch (in the machine itself), so it's double-covered for overflow prevention. Flooding seems highly unlikely. The flaky connections he mentions are the 3 volt ones -- again, not a fire risk. Common for low-voltage contacts like that to get flaky in commercial devices too (e.g., face-plate contacts for thermostats, etc) and without disastrous outcomes. The high-voltage/amperage connections he uses are plugged into the OEM harness, so the same connectors as the OEM motherboard. So, again, seems like you're just making up things to complain about. I don't want to encourage people to mess with mains power if they're not adequately informed, but it's also not a magical domain you can't learn about with a little research and caution (easier in the US than the UK...). And his gadget worked for years, by the sounds of it, which is better than any commercial appliance I've bought in the last decade... But I agree he's probably gambling on the home insurance issue, even if his device(s) isn't at fault...
shepherdjerred 1y ago
For roller shades, I've had success with Ryse SmartShade [0] + their WiFi hub + Home Assistant. Setup was not straightforward at all, and I have 10 windows, but it was worth it in the end. You can write automations in YAML (or TypeScript with [1]), and your blinds can also be controllable with Siri or whatever voice assistant you like. [0]: https://www.helloryse.com/products/rysesmartshade https://www.helloryse.com/products/rysesmartshade [1]: https://docs.digital-alchemy.app/ https://docs.digital-alchemy.app/
duxup 1y ago
I have a south side back of house open kitchen / dining / living room on my house. 11 Windows. I have consumer model power roller shades. I love them. If you have a room that gets lots of sun / you like the views, being able to hit a button and open it's an amazing quality of life thing.
js373054 1y ago
If you want something less jank I suggest this https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2071225 https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2071225 3d printed gear box with a servo that sits inline with the shaft. Invisible outside of the blinds if you route the cables correctly. I controll mine with esphome and home assistant rock solid for years
- alright2565 1y ago
  If this is your model, would you mind making the first pic a picture of it installed? It's hard for me to visualize how it is supposed to work.
  - nickjantz 1y ago
    Im not the person you’re asking but this looks like it sits inline to the actual shaft that turns the blinds. Not the pole that hangs down you turn by hand. I looked at doing this exact thing and on my blinds there’s plenty of room in the top construction of the blinds to put a servo in there you would never see unless you’re looking for it. The rod itself was even not perfectly round so you could 3d print a shape to go around it very easily. I’m honestly shocked there’s not an aftermarket company already doing this exact thing.
- shmoozername 1y ago
  How is it for sound isolation? One thing I like about the OP is attention to isolating the motor from the wall and blinds by soft bits so you don't get amplified motor buzz.
burnt-resistor 1y ago
My mom's old house had a non-smart remote controlled Bosch drape opener about 6 meters / 20 ft long that was probably several hundred $.
Quenby 1y ago
[dead]
braxxox 1y ago
Nadine would be proud.
kirillzubovsky 1y ago
Great job! I bet so many of us (self included) had this nagging need to do this, but you actually followed through. Kudos!
- scotty79 1y ago
  I had thought of this many times, but automating stuff around the house always hits a wall of "do I really want to have less reasons to stand up from my computer?".
  - socalgal2 1y ago
    I've had the opposite thought. If I had these blinds I'd set them to open around the time to when I want to wake up. The light would tell my body it's time to get up and I'd wake up earlier and possibly more awake. At least that's the hope. Vs now, my blinds are closed for privacy, the room is dark in the morning, dark rooms make me sleep longer.
Animats 1y ago
Powered blinds and curtains are common, but powered home windows are very rare. Even though home control systems which managed windows would be great for heating and cooling. Interesting that they're not as common as electric auto windows. (Linear induction motors were invented for curtains. Really. Kirsch Electrac)
- ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 1y ago
  > Linear induction motors were invented for curtains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Wheatstone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Wheatstone would like a word
TimByte 1y ago
The idea of waking up to a silent, 8-minute reveal of daylight is honestly kind of poetic
Tajnymag 1y ago
I really wish there was a way to implement something like this for my skylight blinds. So far I haven't found anything which wouldn't need throwing away existing blinds and/or other expensive montage.

329 points by busymom0 1y ago

Would measuring motor current be a better way to determine torque? Not an expert but seems like you could sense voltage across a fairly small shunt to do it.

01100011 1y ago
That's how we did it when I worked on a gate-arm/access control system. I'd monitor current and if a spike occurred I'd back the arm up because it likely hit something.
cpgxiii 1y ago
Motor current is a workable, but generally unsatisfactory, proxy for torque when using heavily geared motors. Far better to measure output torque directly if you can, which is what's being done here using what is essentially a series elastic mechanism (itself a very common way of implementing torque sensing). To elaborate more, current sensing is only "better" in an ease-of-implementation sense, in that a lot of motor drivers already have current sensing built in/easily added. For some applications this is good-enough, but in terms of estimating "real number" torque from current, it can take a lot of work to characterize for geared motors.
- buescher 1y ago
  Motor current is an excellent way to measure torque and is what is done in real-world settings all the time. As a hobbyist you might have to settle for relative torque if you aren't in a position to characterize a motor or you don't have manufacturer's data for it.
  - cpgxiii 1y ago
    I wouldn't say excellent. Motor current->torque is well correlated for motors in isolation, or with very low gear ratio. Not so with higher gear ratios. Can the current value be used to make control decisions for the motor? Yes. Does the current give you torque in Nm? No. In the robotics world this is sometimes distinguished between actuators that report "effort" (i.e. a current-derived estimate) and actuators that report torque (i.e. actual torque sensing or direct-drive with current sensing). Both can be useful, but "effort" is not torque.
    - buescher 1y ago
      Current will never directly give you torque in Nm which is a straw man argument - you will always have to know the motor constant, input voltage, coil resistance, and gear ratio to back out torque. That's characterizing the motor. Yeah, that's a lot of work for a hobbyist, but it's not at all unreasonable to consider a motor an excellent torque transducer - that's what it does.
      - cpgxiii 1y ago
        If the current->torque behavior of motors with gearboxes could be generally well characterized, the entire distinct market sector of "cobots" would not exist because every industrial robotics vendor would have long had good torque modelling on their actuators. As it stands, Universal Robots (and likely their clones) do use current->torque characterization for their actuators (which, amusingly, is then stored on a robot-specific USB drive or SD card), and their torque sensing is shit. Shit enough that for any useful force/torque application you still need a separate force/torque sensor. Schunk, for some of their electric parallel grippers with "force" feedback, only characterizes them at a single velocity and there is significant error in the force estimate at any other speed. Good current->torque characterization of a complete actuator is so difficult that approximately no vendors in the automation space are willing to do it.
      - Karliss 1y ago
        The main keywords here are high gear ratio and cheap parts. I am not making universal claims about all use cases. For most sane designs, sure electric motors are great at converting energy into torque. Normally you would want most of the electric energy to be turned into useful work. Which implies that electric power directly correlates with mechanical power or torque*speed. The same can't always be said about gearboxes, especially for some of those targeted at hobby/toy use cases with crazy gear ratios like 1000:1 or higher. Gear ratio can be so high that you will strip the gears or make the shaft connection slip long before you can apply sufficient torque to slow down the dc motor which is almost free spinning and spending most of it's energy to overcome friction in first few gearbox stages instead of doing useful work. In a toy or hobby project when you want something to spin slowly it might not matter that the gearbox is <10% efficient if it allows you to reuse same cheap brushed DC motor as hundreds of other toys. Increased torque is partially a side effect of slowing down the tiny motor not the primary goal, although at those slower speeds you probably want slightly higher torque but nowhere near as much as what the gear ratio gives in theory. Even some non toy use cases like cheap home appliances might occasionally use crappy inefficient gearboxes and dumbest electronics possible, especially if the 1-3W motor isn't main consumer of power. There might not even be motor controller or MCU to monitor the current. It's not always question of lot of work for hobbyist, as it is result of using cheap of the shelf parts and modules which are optimized with different goal in mind and give very poor signal to noise ratio. Doesn't matter how much characterization you do if the change in temperature, grease viscosity and distribution, plastic flex produces higher variance in motor load than any force you can apply to final gearbox stage. I guess the more careful choice of suitable combination of parts from more specialized stores can be considered "lot of work for hobbyist" compared to picking first result on amazon or whatever you found in your junk bin so your argument still stands. Of course high gear ratio or slow speed doesn't always mean inefficient gearboxes. There are solutions for slow rotation with or without high gear ratio which are reasonably efficient thus allowing to use motor current for estimating torque. And any serious or well designed equipment will use them. But that usually means more complex gearbox, motor controller or purpose built electric motors all of which is either more expensive or require high MOQ orders from manufacturers.
  - numpad0 1y ago
    There was a news story few days ago that Sony is launching an Ethernet controlled smart motor with integral reducer for robotics applications, and it has encoders on both sides of the reducer plus torque on output shaft. There's nothing so far on the English side of the public Internet about it, at all. ... so I doubt motor torque be end all be all. Especially when Sony does it like that.

theywillnvrknw 1y ago

Sorry, I had to post this :| if Apple made window blinds... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv6EMd8dlQk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv6EMd8dlQk

neilv 1y ago

What are the child safety considerations to be careful of, with blinds, and with openers? (I recall seeing warning stickers and design changes on ordinary miniblinds. I suspect that one of the changes involved having multiple pull cords be separate and loose, rather than a fastened together or a single looped cord. But I'd guess that's not the only safety design decision.)

madaxe_again 1y ago
I think the principle two things are “they can’t pull it off the wall and onto themselves” and “they can’t hang themselves”. With automatic openers you add “they can’t get snarled up/lose a finger in the mechanism” and “they can’t electrocute themselves”. I went extremely belt and braces with our blind opener - but it is toddler proof. Attached the lower end of the cord to the ceiling, attached a pulley that hangs on the cord, hung a 1kg weight from it, and used a solenoid from a broken linktap valve to pull a pin that allows the weight to fall and pull the cord. Even with the blinds open the whole assemblage is entirely out of her reach, and it goes for the opposite effect to the poster’s implementation - blinds slam open in about half a second with a quiet whirr, as I prefer a jarring wakeup, and my wife would sleep through Armageddon. Reset is manual, but that’s fine, closing them is an optional and trivial activity.
- toxik 1y ago
  What in Rube Goldberg is this setup?
  - madaxe_again 1y ago
    Heath Robinson, in fact, as I’m British.
AStonesThrow 1y ago
What are the safety considerations of smart blinds opening up a bedroom at inopportune moments, such as children playing outside while you're having sex or changing clothes? Is there a lockout mode for "I/we are not decent" or do the blinds just sort of majestically reveal the bedroom to your backyard/parking lot observers like curtains opening on a feature film?

AnotherGoodName 1y ago

Fwiw automated blinds in the bedroom are a 100% no brainer benefit. It's wonderful and better than an alarm clock with 0 mental load (set the times to open close across the week once and then never think about them again, you can keep the weekend manual if you like). As in a lot of home automation actually makes things worse. Replacing a convenient light switch with an app? 100% terrible idea and actually makes things inconvenient, don't automate those. But the blinds, specifically those in your bedroom? Do it! One of those life hacks that's really not that expensive and makes your life better with 0 cognitive load after initial setup.

dzhiurgis 1y ago
You are making assumption I want to wake up that early. Quite opposite - I’m searching for way to completely black out the room since kids will wake up with slightest shred of light, far before daycare starts. And I’m not even living if far lats. But yeah I still want them for convenience. Problem is I don’t want cables dangling around curtains and battery options are limited.
- Etheryte 1y ago
  This comment makes no sense. You choose when you want your automated blinds to open, if you don't want to wake up early, just don't set them to open early?
  - ranger_danger 1y ago
    This comment also makes no sense... they said completely black out a room, which blinds alone cannot do.
    - jeroenhd 1y ago
      Blinds bolted on to the window frame can't, but blinds integrated into the window frame definitely can.
    - Etheryte 1y ago

J_Shelby_J 1y ago

I just want to share that these are by far the best home automation you can have. I love my smart lights, hacked together smart humidifier, smart fans (the vornado dc fans with outlet switches), intake air pump, and air quality monitoring. But nothing has the quality of life impact of smart blinds. It’s the best, and probably only, way to reliably keep your sleep schedule in sync. Smart lightbulbs - four of the brightest you can buy - are nothing compared to a window on a cloudy day.

threatofrain 1y ago
Could we hear more about your home automation stack? I'm looking to get into this myself.
- joshvm 1y ago
  Can't speak for OP, but just get Home Assistant running and play around. It'll work in Docker in anything, but it's a good use for an old Raspberry Pi. There isn't much more of a stack than that, and HA is by far the most polished OSS solution. It's got some sharp edges - every time I've done a major auto-update it's broken something critical. You can run it alongside other controllers like the Hue Bridge, which is nice to have as a backup (since 90% of what most people connect is smart lighting). Probably the most useful simple automation I have is an motion activated dim light in the bathroom at night, but that's using Hue. Then look at ESPHome, which is an ecosystem for making your own DIY sensors and controllers that can feed into HA. For example we have a Sensirion air quality sensor that triggers a smart switch connected to a fan if the particulate level gets high when cooking. You can go a very long way with on/off to control non-smart devices, and your sensors don't need to be particularly accurate (like absolute PM2.5) as long as the conditon you trigger on is repeatable. The only thing to think about is what hardware ecosystem makes sense for you. For example there's at least four different competing standards for connectivity (WiFi, Zigbee, Z-Wave, Matter/Thread, etc). So getting a Zigbee dongle isn't a bad idea because then you can connect any IKEA or Hue device (among others).
  - asdefghyk 1y ago

TheKnack 1y ago

I have these on all of my blinds and they are amazing. You can sometimes get them on sale for $50-60 each. They come with a solar panel that keeps them charged. You can add a hub that makes them work with HomeKit. https://us.switch-bot.com/products/switchbot-blind-tilt https://us.switch-bot.com/products/switchbot-blind-tilt

xyst 1y ago

Person just wanted to automate a few "dumb" appliances but ended up building his own system (software and hardware) to do this. I wish I had time to bike shed like this. Just learning, tinkering, and enjoying life.

quesera 1y ago
That's puttering, tinkering, or experimenting. It's a good thing. Bikeshedding is wasting time on trivial and pointless efforts or discussions. It's a bad thing. :) https://phk.freebsd.dk/sagas/bikeshed/ https://phk.freebsd.dk/sagas/bikeshed/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality

asimpletune 1y ago

Does anyone know if something like this already exists for the heavy duty, built-in shutters they have in Italy? The kind that close and form a barrier over the window and are operated with a flat roll of fabric from inside.

notpushkin 1y ago
I’ve seen those somewhere in the Southeast Asia so I think I’ve got what you’re saying. The challenge would be to replace the stopper you currently have (because it’s hard to work around it with a motor) and replace it with something you can activate electrically.
patrickk 1y ago
They also have them in Germany. I used to have the manual "flat roll of fabric" in the past, and upgraded the entire rollers in the house to electric ones (I don't know if it's possible to only upgrade the fabric roll -> electric switch without upgrading the entire shutter). After you have electric-controlled rollers, you can control them via any automation you want by installing a "Shelly Plus 2PM" device behind each switch. I connect the Shellys to home assistant, and from there, trigger all the rollers to go down a certain number of minutes after sunset. They all rise at a certain time in the morning. You can always trigger them manually too, of course. ChatGPT can spit out very complex YAML for HA if you want to make life easier, your only limit is your imagination.
lultimouomo 1y ago
Yes, the keyword you are looking for is "tapparella motorizzata".

tayo42 1y ago

I need to figure something like this out. My bedroom has this arch window about 3-4ft wide that's over 10ft high that I've permanently blacked out so I can sleep in. I'd love an easy way to open it and get light in the day though.

ge96 1y ago

Funny I used that white magnetic encoder and now I see it everywhere

vanschelven 1y ago

I wondered what an "homebrew automated" was and by which mechanism it could blind the person who opened it...

ThrowawayTestr 1y ago

I love the choice of enclose.

KennyBlanken 1y ago

"I doubled up the relays feeding the main motor and the heating coil, which gives a lot more headroom on the amperage" ...That's not how that works. One of the relays is going to close first, and those set of contacts will take all the load. Similarly, one set is going to bear all the drama from breaking the connection (and with the motor, there's inductive kickback.) The correct way to do this is to look up the motor rating for your relay and then size accordingly, not to do dumb shit like "oh I'll just double up these two relays." Of course he fucks up and uses a resistor from mains to logic, too. Mains and logic should never, ever, ever come anywhere near each other. They're supposed to be physically isolated on a PCB, cutouts in the board, even. Don't fuck with mains / appliances / HVAC / household water supply if you don't know what you're doing. This guy has no fucking idea what he's doing, and some winter day he's going to come home to a house that's 100 degrees inside and a flooded first floor (notice he didn't connect the water leak sensor?) Home insurance is scummy, annoying, difficult and weasely in the best of circumstances. The second they figure out you had some chewing gum and duct tape hodgepodge running your dishwasher and that's what caused the flood, they will not only refuse to pay, they'll cancel your coverage on the spot. Then you find out the joys of not having home insurance coverage on a house with a mortgage. Edit: Holy christ I missed this part: "It seemed to be due to the push-on jumper cables either becoming too loose after years of jiggling or perhaps oxidizing and self-insulating a bit." That is how you start a fire, people.

shmoozername 1y ago
Looks to me like he maintained proper mains separation except for the one assembly mistake he admitted to (which wasn't catastrophic, obviously -- his wiring color choices look good for avoiding catastrophic errors). The relay board he's using (I recognize it) is rated for mains voltages, and power-wise is ok-ish for the task (I wouldn't choose it for a commercial product, but for his exact scenario--see below--it's probably ok). Doubling up the relays works fine for the main concern, which is overheating via sustained high amperage, which is how fires start. Surge risk is usually just welding the relay, not starting a fire (unless you're way over spec, which he is not), and it almost always welds shut, not open, so less likely to fail silently into the scenario where it's running on one relay and the sustained amperage becomes a risk, and instead into behaving obviously badly as is typical when motherboards go out (at which point you turn it off and rectify, just like a commercial one). He mentions the whole unit is isolated from mains when not in use, so in that respect it's safer than a commercial one as long as he doesn't run it when away from home/asleep. Again, not a viable commercial design, but not insane with proper supervision either. I was curious how you knew about the leak sensor so I did a quick search, and see you're just making things up to complain about -- that model has a turbidity sensor (which I suspect are the NC wires you noticed), but no leak sensor. Oh no! His water might be too turbid! Also the fill valve is wired inline with the float switch (in the machine itself), so it's double-covered for overflow prevention. Flooding seems highly unlikely. The flaky connections he mentions are the 3 volt ones -- again, not a fire risk. Common for low-voltage contacts like that to get flaky in commercial devices too (e.g., face-plate contacts for thermostats, etc) and without disastrous outcomes. The high-voltage/amperage connections he uses are plugged into the OEM harness, so the same connectors as the OEM motherboard. So, again, seems like you're just making up things to complain about. I don't want to encourage people to mess with mains power if they're not adequately informed, but it's also not a magical domain you can't learn about with a little research and caution (easier in the US than the UK...). And his gadget worked for years, by the sounds of it, which is better than any commercial appliance I've bought in the last decade... But I agree he's probably gambling on the home insurance issue, even if his device(s) isn't at fault...

shepherdjerred 1y ago

For roller shades, I've had success with Ryse SmartShade [0] + their WiFi hub + Home Assistant. Setup was not straightforward at all, and I have 10 windows, but it was worth it in the end. You can write automations in YAML (or TypeScript with [1]), and your blinds can also be controllable with Siri or whatever voice assistant you like. [0]: https://www.helloryse.com/products/rysesmartshade https://www.helloryse.com/products/rysesmartshade [1]: https://docs.digital-alchemy.app/ https://docs.digital-alchemy.app/

duxup 1y ago

I have a south side back of house open kitchen / dining / living room on my house. 11 Windows. I have consumer model power roller shades. I love them. If you have a room that gets lots of sun / you like the views, being able to hit a button and open it's an amazing quality of life thing.

js373054 1y ago

If you want something less jank I suggest this https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2071225 https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2071225 3d printed gear box with a servo that sits inline with the shaft. Invisible outside of the blinds if you route the cables correctly. I controll mine with esphome and home assistant rock solid for years

alright2565 1y ago
If this is your model, would you mind making the first pic a picture of it installed? It's hard for me to visualize how it is supposed to work.
- nickjantz 1y ago
  Im not the person you’re asking but this looks like it sits inline to the actual shaft that turns the blinds. Not the pole that hangs down you turn by hand. I looked at doing this exact thing and on my blinds there’s plenty of room in the top construction of the blinds to put a servo in there you would never see unless you’re looking for it. The rod itself was even not perfectly round so you could 3d print a shape to go around it very easily. I’m honestly shocked there’s not an aftermarket company already doing this exact thing.
shmoozername 1y ago
How is it for sound isolation? One thing I like about the OP is attention to isolating the motor from the wall and blinds by soft bits so you don't get amplified motor buzz.

burnt-resistor 1y ago

My mom's old house had a non-smart remote controlled Bosch drape opener about 6 meters / 20 ft long that was probably several hundred $.

Quenby 1y ago

[dead]

braxxox 1y ago

Nadine would be proud.

kirillzubovsky 1y ago

Great job! I bet so many of us (self included) had this nagging need to do this, but you actually followed through. Kudos!

scotty79 1y ago
I had thought of this many times, but automating stuff around the house always hits a wall of "do I really want to have less reasons to stand up from my computer?".
- socalgal2 1y ago
  I've had the opposite thought. If I had these blinds I'd set them to open around the time to when I want to wake up. The light would tell my body it's time to get up and I'd wake up earlier and possibly more awake. At least that's the hope. Vs now, my blinds are closed for privacy, the room is dark in the morning, dark rooms make me sleep longer.

Animats 1y ago

Powered blinds and curtains are common, but powered home windows are very rare. Even though home control systems which managed windows would be great for heating and cooling. Interesting that they're not as common as electric auto windows. (Linear induction motors were invented for curtains. Really. Kirsch Electrac)

ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 1y ago
> Linear induction motors were invented for curtains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Wheatstone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Wheatstone would like a word

TimByte 1y ago

The idea of waking up to a silent, 8-minute reveal of daylight is honestly kind of poetic

Tajnymag 1y ago

I really wish there was a way to implement something like this for my skylight blinds. So far I haven't found anything which wouldn't need throwing away existing blinds and/or other expensive montage.