Coming back to update this post. I got the Comfortex blinds and they work well with the Bond Integration. See more details at:Advice on automated blinds - #38 by calinatl
To answer my own questions:
- Don't know about the NeoSmart because I went with the Bond. The commands from the remote don't get shared with HE, but it does not matter. See link above.
- This complicated solution is unnecessary. I just set the blinds to open or close at the times I want. If someone grabbed the remote and put the blinds to desired different setting prior to the HE automation, the HE sends the command, but nothing happens because the blinds are already where they are supposed to be. If someone halfway closed a blind, the HE would fully close the blind. While the solution proposed seems like it would theoretically work, as of this writing, the HE / Bond Integration does not yet transfer either the Bond Preset/Favorite or the Stop commands to the HE, so you can't yet write automations involving those.
- a. Cannot completely answer this as I did not try the NeoController, but so far I don't think there is any advantage.
b. As of this writing the official HE Bond integration does not yet support favorites, so no. I understand this may be possible with the community written Bond Integration, but I'm waiting for the official one to support favorites. - YES to the HE integration for Bond, with some caveats:
a. I have to set up the top and bottom rails as separate blinds. There is no native support in Bond for TDBU, thus there is nothing in HE. The only impact this has is you can't program the top and bottom rail simultaneous movement as a single action - you have to program it as two separate actions, which you can program to occur simultaneously.
b. The naming in Bond and HE for the blinds is "Open" and "Closed" where open corresponds with the rail up, and closed corresponds with the rail down. With TDBU it is not that simple. Bottom rail down, top rail up = "Closed", and Open can either be Top rail up, bottom rail up, or top rail down, bottom rail down. You need to keep this in mind when programming and make the appropriate translation in your head to get each rail in the position you want at the time you want.
Other: The Comfortex RF remote will micro move the rail if you just press and release the button. If you want the rail to continue, you have to press and hold the button. Bond supposedly has a pairing for this type of remote, so I selected that option. But even then, the shade is only about 60% responsive for automations launched from the Bond app (ie anything using the preset/favorite since HE does not yet support that). HOWEVER, for an automations launched from HE (ie anything that fully raises or lowers either the rails), I found that sending the same command three times, each 1/4 second after the previous, executes the automation flawlessly.
Hope the above helps someone else. I spent hours seeking affordable TDBU small profile blackout cellular shades wider than 90" that I could automate using HE. I bought from Blinds Express and it was a great experience (don't work for them, just a happy customer). The top rail is only 1.5" tall, and with the addition of the Bond, I'm connected to HE.
