Well, I donât have the Graber, but I have 6 Somfy Glydea drapes. Two are in the bedroom on the windows, in a group.
Here are the pros and cons I discovered.
Pros: having them in a group avoids âpopcorn effectâ, and they move in unison. Automations are easier, just open/close/MyPosition for the bedroom.
Cons: none, really, except for a âfeatureâ, having to do with how Somfy implements the âMy Positionâ feature. The âMy Positionâ command is the same as the Stop command. If the Stop command is sent while the drapes are moving, the drapes stop (whether for the group, if both are moving, or a single drape, if only one is moving). If the Stop (i.e., My Position) command is sent while the drapes are stopped, the drapes move to the preset âMy Favorite Positionâ. The difficulty occurs if an external grouping is done, as in Alexa. If you create an Alexa Group of, for example, Office Drapes, Dining Room Drapes, etc., and include the individual Left and Right Bedroom Drapes and also the group Bedroom Drapes, then, if you tell Alexa to move all the drapes to My Position, then, the command is sent to the individual drapes in the group and then to the group. The first command starts motion to the preset favorite position, then the second command stops motion.
Our solution is to have a Telis 5 channel remote hanging on the wall behind the drapes, with one channel for the left windowâs drapes and a second channel for the right windowâs drapes. That way, if we ever wanted to control each window individually, we could. Everything else just operates the group to move both in unison. Interestingly, we have never controlled them individually except for initial testing.
The reason we donât have separate wall controls for the group and for each separate drape is that the Decoflex wall controls only control 5 items, so we have one button for the bedroom drapes group and the other 4 buttons control the other 4 Glydea drapes in the house. Each room has the same 5 button Decoflex control
Thatâs how/why we did it.
