(Resolved) Moving from Wink - Bali/Somfy Shade Woes in Hubitat. Help!

You telling me that makes me suspect some interference in your mesh? Do you have many z-wave devices? I can't remember what you said. I'm particularly interested in the powered devices. Are these blinds z-wave or z-wave plus? Turning on the power source would trigger the blind to communicate with your hub. What is the brand name of the shades?

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All the shades are powered. These blinds are almost 3+ years, so I think these would be z-wave (and not plus).

Shade Type: Bali Autoview (Somfy motor). This is the link to their support site. And this is the link to the Shade Manual.

Do these use zwave to radio hub?

No, it has direct integration with Z-Wave hub. Here are the instructions from the manual. This is what I had to used to integrate with Wink Hub 2 and now also with HE.

An interesting bit I just found on Bali/Gerber shade support site.

It say's 'No intermediate positioning' (at least for Wink), but it worked flawlessly for 3+ years with me on Wink. And also, in HE2, my office blind works just fine with intermediate.

I suspect this might be a FLiRS device, but I can't find anything on the protocol. Wink supports beaming within the hub natively. HE needs repeaters to do this. I find in Z-Wave Alliance These results, which I'm not finding what I'm looking for. I'm unsure if ST and Wink programmed specifically for these blinds? Which wold explain why the worked, but seems unlikely.
Here is what I suggest because you have what you need to do it. I know that wink supports beaming natively, so I would find the instructions to change your wink hub into a repeater. If that works, then it would just be poor communication to the blinds and you can find something else to repeat with beaming down the road when wink cuts off the hubs. The cost is your time. But, would help to determine if it's a mesh issue. I suspect it is because I can't imagine that these blinds wouldn't be FLiRS protocol.
I think this is the link to the instructions.

I am actually going to give away my Wink to someone. Also, they will start charging monthly subscription soon, so I might as well spend money on something else than them.

So if I understand it correctly, if this is a distance issue, how about I move my hub with in 15-20 feet of these blinds?

Try it. Don't forget to run a repair after you move it.
Can't hurt to try.

I was thinking further on why does my morning rule work but not the evening one! Then I thought of the distance from the hub of all the shades. On inspecting both the rules, I realized that the order of shades in the morning rule is closest first and then the farthest (my Sunroom is closer than Breakfast area). I can't seem to order the blinds in the rules, so I split the evening rule in to two parts - to first trigger Sunroom blinds and then the breakfast area blinds with a delay. Holy Batman, that seem to have worked!! At least one trial that I did.....

I will test it more tomorrow (got yelled at 'cos kids were already in bed) but fingers crossed.....

Morning Rule


Evening (New) Rule

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Ok, that was a premature dance on my part. Gremlins are back :frowning:

I am going to move my HE to spot closer to the blinds as a new step. :expressionless:

Just a guess since I have Graber and not Bali but it's possible you have an old firmware. Not sure how to check firmware with HE but the old firmware caused random position on Smartthings and Hubitat. Not sure why but I didn't have issue with Wink either until I moved them to Smartthings. Pay attention to the indicator light on your shades when they stop at those random position. If they turned red then it's a firmware issue.

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Thanks. How do I update the firmware?

Get the firmware from your provider and use this below to update. Saying that, if you don't see the red light on your shade when it stopped. Then don't waste your time on the firmware. It's something else.

Thanks. I have about 20 shades, definitely see red light on few of them.

OK. I moved the HE within 15 -20 feet of direct line of sight of the blinds, repaired the network. It worked as intended once and then back to erratic behavior. :face_with_head_bandage: :cry:

Really frustrated. I have been trying to follow a couple of other threads, and tried to use another driver but that driver is throwing errors. Not really sure what else I can do!! In addition to getting HE, have sunk in quite some money in getting Lutron hub, repeaters, new z-wave switches. I might have to go back to using Wink (which I really don't want to) but proper working of blind automation is a must.

I haven't reached out to Hubitat support yet though, should that be the next step?

Thanks

What is the software version of your hub?

2.2.1.115

Upgraded to 2.2.1.116. It took a few tries over a week or so to get it to upgrade it from 2.2.1.115, finally it completed successfully yesterday.

I have been mucking around quite a bit and starting to dabble into groovy. Coding has never been my forte, but I was able to do some tinkering that has somewhat made the situation better but not fully resolved. I guess something is better than nothing.

(I wrote to Hubitat support, who after a few days of no response, closed my ticket with a message that my case has been handed over to engineering..... radio silence thereafter!!! Well, I will vent over support some other day.... Unfortunately, I am beyond my return date for both Hubitat & Lutron Hubs, otherwise, I might have taken that step because I was getting tired. Anyhow, I am still here, so onwards & upwards).

I am primarily now using a modified version of a driver from Eric Vitale

  • I essentially removed some of the Dimmer specific code.
  • To use devices running this driver in the Rule Machine in Hubitat, one needs an ability to set 'Position'. In contrast, the original code was referencing 'Levels,' so I changed 'Level' references/routines to 'Position' so I could now set the shade level/position using HE Rule Machine. Also updated custom scenes to 'Custom Set position' Commands.
  • I got the original driver idea from driver posted by @DeveloperDavidB's and extended @jdntx's Parse routine on this thread Bali Autowave Shades - Erratic Behavior - #13 by jdntx

This driver seems to be doing a much better job than Generic Z Wave Shade driver. Some shades still don't close from a partial open position to fully close but definitely better than the original driver. I just hope that @hubitat support sees this and helps incorporate this in the stock driver and make it stable. I think there are enough of us with these shades that, this needs some official love.

Here is Link to the updated driver:

This is a partial solution (partial because pop-corn effect still occurs on some shades randomly) to my first two use cases:

Use Case 1: Open Shades 50% in the morning (Implemented using Rule engine)
Use Case 2: Close Shades entirely at night time (Implemented using Rule engine)

For the next two use cases, I created two virtual devices. I then created rules (for UC 3 & 4 respectively), for which the trigger is 'ON' state for the respective virtual device. Now I can ask Alexa to turn on this virtual device, which in turn triggers the rule. Here is the screenshot:

I see that you discussed firmware. Had you gotten anywhere with that?