DIY motorized blinds, status

[Tfernandezw]

Hi all,

So I motorized three sets of roller blinds I had. I used the cheap amazon kits which are $50 each and modified them to fit my blinds. I can help people out with this process if they PM me.

The blinds are controlled by RF remotes which can be individually controlled via the three different remotes. I am in the process of soldering wires to the remotes to control them via a relay controller on a raspberry pi, which in turn will then be controlled with Homeseer. the remotes only have Up, Down, Stop.

Can anyone think of a way I can somehow use Homeseer to use a slider to control the blinds? The Up/Down only require one click and it will go all the way up or down to set limits on the motor which I programmed already. My plan for setting 1/4 way or 1/2 way would be to time the blinds and then set timers up with Homeseer.

Does anyone have better ideas of how I could do this?

[mrhappy]

I'd personally avoid leaving the timing of the up/down out of HS, in case HS is tied up doing anything at the time that causes delays. I'd have the timing kept either on a Pi (although the Pi is potentially susceptible to this depending on what else you are doing with it) or even a small microcontroller that accepted an input depending on the status you require and that handled the timings. That way also you would get reliable timing and could even look at some self calibration routine.

If you press a button in HS then it has to go through the events engine, through any plugin/script, across to the pi, then into the motor - all those points can incur delays and throw your timing out. If you instead just sent a 1/2/3 binary value to a micro (say something like an ESP8266) then that could handle the timing for you and be a little more accurate.

[rmasonjr]

Hi all,

So I motorized three sets of roller blinds I had. I used the cheap amazon kits which are $50 each and modified them to fit my blinds. I can help people out with this process if they PM me.

The blinds are controlled by RF remotes which can be individually controlled via the three different remotes. I am in the process of soldering wires to the remotes to control them via a relay controller on a raspberry pi, which in turn will then be controlled with Homeseer. the remotes only have Up, Down, Stop.

Can anyone think of a way I can somehow use Homeseer to use a slider to control the blinds? The Up/Down only require one click and it will go all the way up or down to set limits on the motor which I programmed already. My plan for setting 1/4 way or 1/2 way would be to time the blinds and then set timers up with Homeseer.

Does anyone have better ideas of how I could do this?

I'd like to know which kits you used.
Also, did you use a custom tube, or did you retrofit a motor into an existing blind?

[Tfernandezw]

I used these engines MorningRising 12V DIY Electric Roller Blind / Shade Tubular 25mm Motor Kit & Remote Controller https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01DZQ43AI..._lfIazbDPTHNYV

And I cut the PVC to size and modified the motor to fit. I used 1 1/4 Pvc because of the opening in the frame I had, but 1 1/2 would be Alot easier I'd you have the room.

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[langenet]

I'd like to find a solution at this price which can draw/close curtains to keep the sun off my grand piano...

Robert

[petez69]

I think you would be best off doing this with an arduino..build some logic that would say close the blind first and then time it going up..you could create inputs on the arduino for open-close1/4 1/2 etc and have the outputs driver the buttons on the remote..the arduino inputs could be driven by a PI or another arduino connected to HS

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[Tfernandezw]

Quick update. I bought a raspberry pi with a 16 channel relay board. i'm going to solder wires to the remotes and use the relay board to simulate button presses. I'll send pics once I'm set. Sorry for the delay on this.