I'm more worried about stability and quality than money (within reason 
)...
But need to buy some blinds for a couple windows...any guidance would be greatly appreciated! I'd prefer Zigbee for these since I've seen a couple thread that some hub vendors are dropping z-wave (that seems really dumb to me since zwave is SO common)
See if this thread helps
I personally use iBlinds which are zwave.
Not this hub 
.
I have 6 Graber window shades, which I've had for about 4 years with no issues. They are Z-wave and I'm running them with battery packs (8 AA per pack). I get about 8 months of battery life, opening and closing once each day. These are quality shades, custom sized to my windows.
Glad to hear...but I do wonder if most of the new items I buy should not be zwave anymore.
I always for some reason thought it was a superior protocol over the others...though just like Novell's IPX / any many other SNA like tech with token ring...things change...and I can't help but think IP based things like Matter may win out just like it did in the 1990's.
Though it seems to me it would open them up to more hacking.
THANKS!!! I'll take a look
I just went through this thought process and decided on SmartWings, primarily because of the wide range of choices and being impressed with their customer service when I had a couple questions. They are pricey.
I went with Zigbee simply because Z-Wave was $20 more. I have strong meshes for either.
I wish that IKEA was still selling smart shades, but as far as I can tell, they have exited that business for good.
If you go with Grabers, I wrote a driver for those that includes battery reports and a calendar to enter battery replacement date (handy for tracking how long they last).
I just had 2 Somfy roller shades installed,
that communicate to a Bond Bridge to the HE C-7 hub.
They work great.
I have 18 Smartwings. 2 z-wave the rest ZigBee. Most for over two years. All work flawlessly. Would buy again. Two are outdoor on a pergola, Most are roller shades. I tried a few of the Roman shades and didn't like the design.
bbrannon...
That a great recommendation considering how many and how long you've had them. thx
Hi. Do you have your shades connected to the Hubitat hub? I just purchased the c8 hub and want to make sure the shades work with it.
Yes, absolutely. I have a C8 Pro hub and the shades have worked flawlessly with the C8 Pro, and my previous hub, a C7.
Thank you for responding. My shades were purchased in 2018. Does it matter when they were purchased? Can you point me to the step-by-step instructions on how to connect my shades to Hubitat, please?
To some extent, yes. But 2018 is recent enough that your z-wave shades should be fine.
The hub documentation covers adding devices to the hub:
What shades do you have? Do they have remotes with them? marktheknife's instructions are the way to go. You will have to pair each shade with the hub. Instructions for pairing probably came with the shades.
I have the Bali Z-Wave Layed Shades. I purchased them in 2018 from Blinds.com. We have 5 shades, and they all have remotes with them. We have been using the Wink hub for the last 7 years. But it's not working great anymore. So we purchased the Hubitat C-8 last week after doing some research.
Okay, you should be good to go with the C8. Basic steps:
You will have to do a z-wave exclude on each shade before trying to pair them, as they were paired with Wink. You just have to figure out how to trigger exclusion on each shade. I have 8 Graber cellular shades and, in my case, I think that I had to push the button on the shade 2 or 3 time after the hub was put into exclusion mode to exclude the shade. That was some 4 years ago, so my memory is a bit foggy and the instructions are long gone. 
Once a shade is excluded, go through the procedure outlined in the link marketheknife posted to include it to the C8. Again, you will probably have to push a button on the shade (probably 2 or 3 times) after the C8 is put into inclusion mode to pair it.
It worked! Thank you so much. Now I need to set them on a schedule to go up in the morning and down in the evenings. Do you know how to do that? I tried it and it's not working for me.
Glad to hear that you are making progress. You will need to set up an automation to raise or lower the shades on a schedule. Your choices are either Rule Machine or webCoRE, both available as build-in apps in Hubitat. Both have good documentation. I use both, depending upon my needs.
Edit: On second thought, you may want to start with using the Simple Automation Rules built-in app. As the name implies, it's a simplified version of Rule Machine. It should be fine for what you need to automate your shades. I use it to automate some lights.
Download the Hubitat app
