I’m curious how people are controlling their SmartWings shades? I have some installed that have been working fine with the handheld remote or via daily open close automations. I recently installed Zooz Zen35 dimmer/button controllers in the rooms with the shades so I could have local control without the remote.
I would like to setup a button to toggle them open/closed…or ideally setup a button that when pressed will move the shade until released for a partially opened position. I’ve tried creating an app to do this with limited success, my poor programming may be partially responsible. The big problem though is the shades seem very slow to respond, like 10-30+ second delays, and sometimes they just don’t respond. I check the logs and the button presses are being logged instantly but somewhere after that there is something delaying or stopping the shades from activating.
I thought maybe there might be others using the same or similar setup that can shed some light on programming buttons to control shades?
I just use RM, the private boolean is just in case i hit the button too fast. The open is a little extra cause by default i only need to open it half way.
Typically i dont use this automation and is basicly a manual override, my shades typically open/close based on sunrise or my wake up routine and sunset.
You created a custom app? Or a child app of one of the rule apps that come with the hub?
You can do what you want with the button controller app, which is mostly just a specialized front end for Rule Machine made for using with "button" devices.
I would first try controlling the shades directly from their device page, do you still have delays? The delays could be device related and not anything to do with your app programming.
I do this with Lutron Picos and the Button Controller app. My guess is you can do similar with the Zen35. For our purposes I use the five buttons to set open, closed and three predetermined intermediate positions. That fits our needs perfectly. Example for our bedroom shades. In this case I use button three for a separate rule to toggle the master bathroom shade open and closed. In other rooms three is a middle level setting.
Thanks everyone. I took some time to look at the various ways you all implemented your controls and ended up writing a custom app. It seemed like the cleanest way to get it working. I found after watching the logs that a few of my switches and the Zen35 in question needed to be excluded and re-included as they were misbehaving. After that I took some time to figure out some more advanced(for me) programming. I can now say that I’ve gotten the shades working as I wanted and the delay from button press to shade movement is minimal. It’s nice to have it working.
