Haven’t been posting much because everything is working well (thanks to the exceptional help in these forums) except for some persnickety IKEA blinds/shades. 11 of them.
Made a rule to open all the blinds at sunrise and close them at sunset. Most of the blinds follow the rule, but some don’t. Going into the app a few minutes later and selecting run actions gets the slackers in line. So, being lazy, i created another action to do the same thing a minute later. That works most of the time, but every now and then one or two blinds won’t follow the rule. Choosing run action again gets it right.
Could these blinds be going to sleep and they need a couple slaps to wake up?
FWIW 2 blinds out of 3 in one room and 1 blind out of 4 in another room are the blinds with issues
Does Hubitat know that they are open/closed? If so, as a workaround you could setup a loop (repeat) in Rule Machine that checks if any are still in the incorrect state and have the command re-sent when they are not, or exit when they are. Just make sure that you have a limited number of iterations to avoid having it run the whole day if it just won’t work...
Try staggering the time in which the commands are going to the blinds, you maybe flooding your zigbee mesh by sending all the commands out at the same time.
There are a few drivers floating around for these, one of the latest in the long Ikea blind thread has the best one. It will report the % of open/closed. That may help with the loop code.
BTW I'm jealous! 11 blinds! I've got two but that's my (current) limit. I could easily place 10 more, but dang the cost.
Good Luck
They are pricey but less than competitive brands. Was able to cut a couple of them to fit exactly. Not sure who actually makes them, but when COVID was ravaging China last year, the blinds were not available due to shipping issues according to a live person at IKEA.
Was unable to get the IKEA remotes working with HE even though they worked in ST. I purchased Lightify OSRAM 4 button remotes. Have them programmed for up, down and half open.
I have 34" windows in my bedroom, and lucky enough to have an Ikea in town to avoid the $49 shipping charge. They were in stock, and fit perfectly. They are fantastic, and my favorite smart devices, I just want more of them...
My daughter put them on her Christmas list for her room! Funny
I have found if you have multiple blinds in one room, you don’t have to use one of their included repeaters for every blind. My living room has 4 blinds and one repeater. Master bedroom has 3, and only one repeater. The remaining repeaters are in a drawer.
That is the solution! The hub must have been overloaded with multiple zigbee requests all at the same time. Now, one room triggers at sunrise and sunset. Another room triggers a minute later and so on for the next rooms.
Now i am revisiting all sunrise and sunset triggers and stagger the execution times.
Hey @TomG , it looks like you have at least eleven of these IKEA blinds. I currently have six and am thinking of adding eight more. Before I drop more than a grand on blinds, how has your long term usage been? How about having that many on your smart network? Any follow up issues you've had to work through in the past couple years? What's your battery charging strategy?
I am very happy with my blinds. No failures. I charge the battery when the level drops below 20%. Having 2 spare batteries helps.
I have gotten in the habit of relearning the maximum open and close every time I swap a battery. Several blinds seem to lose their open/close limits after the battery is swapped. I can never remember which blinds are finicky like that so I take an extra minute to relearn the blind after replacing the battery.
If the affected blinds are not relearned, they will close all the way and keep closing until the blind wraps up in reverse.
One battery has a charging LED that does not illuminate but still takes a charge. Fiddling with the miniUSB connector makes it flash. Got disgusted with it and tried to take it apart. Squeezed it in a vise to no avail. Still accepts a charge!
