zwave motorized blinds

[Ryan McLean]

Hi - I just follow the list distantly and sometimes need a nudge (hint
James!) if something comes up that I might have info on :-)

The blinds James has in a box are not quite a decade old, because he got
them after I got some for my last place, and that was in 2013.

In my current place I have motorized blinds from Blinds Galore (Their in
house brand). They work with a hub called Neo Smart Hub, and that hub can
be controlled by simple URL commands. That's what I have in my current
place and it works pretty well. The blinds basically have 1 preset position
in addition to full up and full down, but other than the preset you can't
command them to, say, 40% up. They are cordless with a lithium ion battery
in the "roll." I have 2 smaller ones that need charged about once a month
and a larger one that needs charged about every 2.5 weeks, by plugging into
a wall for a few hours. Overall pretty happy.

The Blinds Galore house brand is the same manufacturer as the motorized
stuff you'll see for Home Depot / Lowes house brand, so you can get an idea
of how they work by visiting those retail locations.

The gold standard in cordless / motorized blinds is Lutron. Their "Serena"
line can be controlled by a Lutron "Caseta Pro" hub (You'll need to source
it from an electrical supply house or ebay, the normal Caseta hub sold
through Home Depot / Amazon / Similar will not work). This is a spendy
option and so I haven't made the jump yet as I'm a renter, but if I was in
a place I knew I'd be 10+ years this is the way I would go. They will run
for years on a set of "D" batteries and I believe can be commanded to a
percentage open or closed. The Luton blinds themselves are also a fraction
- maybe 1/3 as loud (virutally silent) compared to everything else on the
market. Yes they are spendy, but it's a case where you get what you pay for.

I don't have Lutron blinds, but I am using Lutron Radio Ra2 stuff through
the plugin James has provided. The blinds should work with what's already
there, or would require a very minor adjustment by James.

Happy to chime in if there are additional questions!



On Wed, Jun 16, 2021 at 11:11 AM X10 <paulx10 at koreneff.net> wrote:

> James:
>
> Their setup instructions for version 2 require an ethernet connection for
> at least firmware updates but operation might be achieved using wireless
> (presumably from their remote).
>
> The Smart Things plugin is for version 1.
>
> HTH
> Paul
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On Jun 16, 2021, at 10:43 AM, James Sentman <james at sentman.com> wrote:
>
> 
> I looked at this and the API as shown there looks fine, can definitely be
> easily implemented. But after looking at their new hub I don’t see anything
> resembling a serial port, is it now over ethernet? Or is something else
> going on? There is some info out there about an HTTP protocol to talk to
> it, there was a Smart Things plugin that documents the protocol and the
> discovery protocol that they used here:
>
>
> https://github.com/johnvey/smartthings-hd-powerview/blob/master/hunter_douglas_powerview_api.md
>
> which is really interesting, and also could completely be turned into an
> XTension plugin. I might need you to collect a bunch of data and or give me
> a temporary passthrough so I can test ;) Or you can work on it and I’ll
> host it. Whatever you wish, but I am not convinced that we can use the
> serial protocol any longer.
>
>
>
> On Jun 15, 2021, at 6:36 PM, Brian Williams <brwill at me.com> wrote:
>
> Next week we are having new Hunter-Douglas blinds installed. We opted to
> add PowerView after I found their API. I am looking forward to creating an
> XTension interface for these blinds.
>
> The API is here:
>
>
> http://cdn.hunterdouglas.com/static/product-operating-system-downloads/PowerView_Hub_Serial_API.pdf
> _______________________________________________
>
>
> Thanks,
>  James
>
>
> James Sentman                       http://www.PlanetaryGear.org
> http://MacHomeAutomation.com
>
>
>
>
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