How I connected my blinds to HS3 in a roundabout way that works great

[politby]

Maybe this'll help someone

I have four blinds of this type




in my TV room. They are lowered/raised by pulling the plastic beaded chain. This type is not possible to motorize using the widely available tube motor method, only by adding a cog wheel motor that pulls the chain. There are a number of such alternatives but they are Bluetooth only so I had to find a workaround which turned out to be surprisingly easy. I purchased four SOMA Smart Shades and installed them. The rest is easy:

Other than the Smart Shade(s) all that’s needed is a Raspberry Pi3.

1. Follow this guide (I don’t use Apple) - I did this to make them controllable from HS3 and my Logitech Harmony:
2. Install ha-bridge on the Raspberry
3. Create device(s) in ha-bridge using http calls
4. Pair the Harmony hub with ha-bridge. The hub will see the blinds as Hue devices.
5. Use the blinds in Harmony activities

The Smart Shades will respond to the following HTTP GET commands:

• <IP address of Raspberry>:8080/moveup/<BT MAC>
• <IP address of Raspberry>:8080/movedown/<BT MAC>
• <IP address of Raspberry>:8080/getbattery/<BT MAC>
• <IP address of Raspberry>:8080/getposition/<BT MAC>
• <IP address of Raspberry>:8080/setposition/<BT MAC>/%<xx>%

so it's easy to build events in Homeseer:





This works 100% and the hardware is excellent. The solar panels even work here at 60 degrees north in November..