Hello experts. Just joined this community and hoping to get some guidance.
I am interested in purchasing a set of motorized roller blinds:
Graywind Motorized Roller Shades 100% Blackout Window Blinds Remote Voice Control Thermal Insulated Triple Weaved Fabric with Valance for Smart Home Office, Customized Size, Light Grey
Found this on Amazon, and obviously this is a Chinese company (I have purchased roller blind motors from Chinese companies before and have never had any trouble with them).
In any case, I am moving into a new house in a few months, and am interested in redoing the Home Automation and Security systems in that house.
Am looking at Hubitat as a HA controller, and using a bunch of Z-Wave devices for automation purposes. Am also looking at Abode for security.
Circling back to the roller blinds, manufacturer says Alexa is supported directly if using newer models, while Google Assistant requires the use of a hub. So if use older versions of Echo, should I be able to integrate with the roller blinds using Hubitat?
I would be grateful for guidance and/or suggestions on better techniques to have a home automations and security system set up.
I was curious about the blinds so I looked them up and found a link on Amazon and read some reviews and that person said the blinds are compatible with the bond bridge. If that is true then you can probably control them via HE. There is a driver available for the bond hub. If the blinds have Alexa control , then you could also use the ECHO speaks app to control them from within HE. Not sure about the only works with newer model echo devices.
I control my Leviosa shades with HE using the bond hub and it works pretty well.
@terminal3, thanks for the guidance. I feel comfortable using the Alexa controls but will learn more about the bond hub.
As far as "newer model Echo devices", manufacturer indicated that direct control via Alexa speaks works only for the newer Echo Gen 4-type devices, but it does state that older Echo devices need to go through a hub. SO it seems that I ought to be able to reuse my older Echo devices or buy the Gen 4 Echo (seems redundant to me if I can control blinds through Gen 3 or older Echo devices if I go through HE!).
Echo devices of different generations don’t have identical hardware specs, but Alexa mostly runs in the cloud regardless of which gen echo device is in use, and as far as I know each generation can do pretty much the same stuff as a result.
Is this a zigbee device? You mentioned it’s a Chinese manufacturer, so perhaps there was a language barrier in their attempts to communicate with you, and they were trying to distinguish between Echo Plus, with a built in zigbee coordinator, and other echo devices, which don’t have a zigbee coordinator built-in and so would require a hub to work with a zigbee device.
@marktheknife, manufacturer does not explicitly state this... Seems like one can choose one of two different types of motors & the "smart motor" is the one that does not require a hub as long as Gen4 Echo devices are used.
Trying to figure out how to attach a screenshot...
The product page is a little confusing and the punctuation is poor (probably a language barrier as I suspected).
But it looks like there’s two options for the motor. One of them requires an RF bridge like Bond or a Broadlink to work with Alexa.
The other option works directly with echo plus devices and echo 4th gen (I had forgotten at first that the 4th gen full size echo has a zigbee coordinator built-in) but needs a bridge to work with other echo devices. That means this option uses zigbee.
So theoretically you could use it directly with Hubitat. However it may or may not work out of the box with available drivers. If it doesnt, a custom driver should make it work.
Only thing to keep in mind is that both z-wave and zigbee are mesh networks. To have an effective range in most homes, devices that repeat messages have to be in the mix, and for the most part any mains powered device is a repeater. But z-wave only repeats for z-wave, and zigbee only repeats for zigbee.
There is a community driver for the Ikea Fyrter blinds that are Zigbee. All local, HE, no cloud. (Although I do use Echo's to open/close them on weekends) They work great, I've got a pair running for more than a year now. They are my favorite Home Automation things in the house!
You would need a local Ikea, shipping is very expensive for these, like $49 from what I recall people saying. I'm fortunate enough to have a local one.
I just received my Hubitat today and proceeded to play around with it. I was able to add a device (Window 1) and assign it to a room. I also linked Hubitat to my Google Home account and for some reason it displays 4 devices. I get that the phone is counted as 1 device, but perhaps the other 2 are Windows 2 and 3, also Zigbee devices, but currently still with SmartThings and works with GH just fine. I wanted to test out one device before fully transitioning the other 2 Windows. And also because Smarthings things for some reason pairs with the device, but is unable to control it. It's constatnly grayed out with network or system errors message and thus GH is unable to access it. Hubitat finds the device and works on the Hubitat without issues. However, Google Home is unable to present me the option to see the Window 1 or any of the 4 devices and assign them a room when linked. I did not create any rules, I just need Google to have access to it for opening and closing purposes. any help would be appreciated. It's frustrating when I am so close to getting it to work. Thanks in advance,
