Hello,
I have a few questions about the Blinds Control. I have 22 blinds in my home and am looking to make them all smart. My question is what is the difference between the Assembled, DIY Kit + 2 Servos & Parts, and Assembled + 2 Servos & Parts. I watched the YouTube video and saw the assembly process…something I definitely don’t want to do. But what about the other 3 options? What are the differences? Also, what does it mean by the Blinds Shaft/Rod Shape…my blinds look like this:
Thanks
@throwaway9500
Assembled means the esp8266 and all the other electronic parts are soldered onto the PCB, and ends of the wiring are together and ready for service. DIY is you assemble everything, but I think you understand that part.
Either option will require you to install the servo into each blind, insert the control case into the blind casing, and route the wires.
The +2 Servos means you can control 3 blinds with one controller, and that +2 option is available in DIY or Assembled. If you purchase the +2 servo option, you are not required to connect all 3 servos to the same controller, you can mix and match to your controller(s). However, 3 servos is Matt’s recommended limit per controller, due to voltage drop during operation. I purchased various shaft shapes of DIY single and +2 quantities, since not all my blinds were the same shaft type, and I connected mostly 2 servos per controller.
The blinds shaft/rod shape is the horizontal shaft inside the blind casing that the servo attaches to and rotates to tilt the blinds. There are various shapes, you’ll need to look inside your blind casings and see what shape you need to order. Be sure you know what every blind shaft shape is, unless they were all purchased at the same time.
Since you do not want to solder, you should choose the 2nd OR 4th options: “Assembled (+$15.00)” OR “Assembled + 2 Servos & Parts (+$41.00)” in whatever quantities you can make it work with your 22 blinds.
Thanks for the great answer sir. That really helped me out. Quick question:
I have four blinds on my main floor. Two are right beside each other, as well as the other two. I checked out the shaft and it’s a squarish shape with a similar rod to the YouTube video. I ordered two sets of the +2 servo option assembled. Does this mean I use one servo to control 2 sets of blinds and the other for the other 2 sets? I’d like to have them one zone so I can say, ‘Open Living Room Blinds’ and have all 4 open.
Thanks for the help
@throwaway9500
What you ordered will provide you with two controllers and six servos. You’ll be able to use the additional two servos with your remaining blinds in the future. Yes, you would use one controller and two servos per pair of windows. Each controller must have a unique name, following Matt’s programming instructions. I used “living-blinds1” for the one set (2) blinds and “living-blinds2” for the other set (2) blinds with my side-by-side (aka mulled) windows.
For each set of blinds, I placed the controller in one of the blinds, along with one servo (the motor that rotates the shaft), with the power plug running down to an outlet. I chose to put the controller in the blind that was closest to an outlet for convenience. The second blind in the set only had a servo. I routed the second servo control wire between the blinds.
I don’t use OpenHAB, I used Mosquito that interfaces with an open source software called HA-Bridge. The HA-Bridge software spoofs as a Phillips HUE Bridge, is locally discoverable by my Amazon Echos and Samsung Smartthings hub. I wrote a blog post on my website about my X10 equipment implementation and the HA-Bridge, very similar to implementing MK’s mqtt blinds. I will soon put out an MK Blinds post related of the same. To make a long story shorter, I created a virtual device called “blinds” that all my blinds behavourly mimic. You can do the same in OpenHAB, many blinds controlled by one virtual device - OR - you can create an Alexa Routine to do the same. Good Luck!
To add to this conversation and hopefully not confuse. The real power in any home automation system is how you create your groups of devices. While I use Home Assistant (mostly as a glorified MQTT controller), I assume that OpenHab allows for groups in a similar fashion. To explain. I have 4 blinds in my living room. 2 are on the left of the room and 2 are on the right. I have an entity (device) for each of the blinds. Let’s call them blind1, blind2, blind3 and blind4. I then created three groups. The LEFT BLINDS contains the devices blinds 1 and 2. The RIGHT BLINDS group contains the devices blinds 3 and 4. The last group, LIVING ROOM BLINDS contains all 4 devices. Now when I use automations or want to manually control the blinds I have all those options. So in the case of opening all the blinds at once that is a simple matter of triggering the LIVING ROOM BLINDS group for me. Hope this helps!
I finally got around to writing a post about my MK Smart Blinds setup here https://coreyswrite.com/electronics/smarten-up-your-dumb-blinds/.