Zwave or Zigbee relay/switch

I've begun setting up my Venetian Blinds to be automated. Had one setup with a servo motor and an esp8266, using Blynk to operate them to whatever angle of opening..

However I have just ordered a hubitat and wondering if I can incorporate it (well the dashboard more to the point).

So I can my options as follows. Both options rely on the esp8266 (either keeping Blynk for setting the various angles for the motor or just using the arduino ide).

  • Option 1 is get a zwave or Zigbee relay to change a digital input on the esp8266 that triggers the various/set opening angles) Although all these seem quite expensive and more for high current
  • Option 2 Maybe create a virtual switch (I believe this is possible on hubitat) that sends a http post to the esp8266 (either using Blynk for the webhook or arduino ide can do it as well I think)

So any other suggestions to make the esp8266 or arduino to trigger the blinds from the hubitat dashboard?

Or any other suggestions for cheapish zigbee or zwave relay..

Or any other way to send some thing from the hubitat dashboard to arduino?

Not sure if it would meet your needs but check out hubduino.

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If you are already using an ESP8266, then hubduino is EXACTLY what you need. It uses the servo library to pass % directly to the board. It is controlled on a dashboard like a dimmer switch. You can even set your preferred percentage values for On and Off in the driver. All you'd have to do is flash the updated sketch to your ESP board. I have it controlling 4 sets of blinds in my house.

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I’m using both Blynk and the Hubitat Maker API with a esp8266 to control and monitor my garage door. Your option 2 can be done through the Maker API.

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This is great news. It seems fairly straight forward as well. Here I was thinking that I would need to learn up about new library's and rewrite my code... But it seems that to run 3 servos on the esp8266 (Nodemcu v1.0) using hubduino may be relatively easy to do.

Yep, HubDuino can do that! I worked with a few very motivated Hubitat Community members to improve HubDuino Servo Motor support to make it very flexible for the control of blinds. We added the ability for speed control and the ability to have multiple servos moving at the same time. Look through the HubDuino thread and you'll see quite a few posts regarding the control of blinds. Welcome to Hubitat!

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Fantastic. I have a thing in my current code for the blinds that tracks the sun. So it rotates the angle based on the difference between the current time and sunrise. But it seems this may be the only thing not already written which is great.

Glad I made the step. Home assistant just didn't work for me.. I have much automation work in tasker (using many of the auto tool add-ons) that link my broadlink and esp8266 devices, but it seems much can be transferred over to hubitat... Plus also moving some of my Blynk things over as well..

This is much more of a system that I expected when I bought it. Time to go read to see how deep the logic can go (if statements). Much time to spend. Lucky I have a weeks leave in 2 weeks.

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So just to make sure I understand this correctly, I need the sketch ESP8266WiFi/ST_Anything_Servos_ESP8266WiFi.ino plus the library's. I get this file (and the library;s required) from GitHub

I can read more, just want to make sure I'm understanding the first step correctly :slight_smile:

Yes, that’s correct. Just follow the HubDuino ReadMe and you should be able to be up and running with an example sketch. Do not try to be selective about what portions of the Arduino\libraries or Arduino\Sketches folders you download and copy. Download the entire .zip file and copy those two folders in their entirety as described in the HubDuino ReadMe.

So I am patiently waiting for my hubitat. Seems its already arrived on my shores so getting really close..

I was wondering if I might be able to implement my angle of the blinds change in hubitat itself? Previously I had a button in Blynk that then triggered something to keep modifying the angle of the blinds based on ((currenttimeHOUR - sunriseHOUR ) *5) + 90. This meant at sunrise the blinds were at 90 degrees, then by 5 hours after surnrise they were almost vertical. This meant the louvers were tilted to the optimal angle through this 5 hour period. After that they opened to 90 degrees again.

I am thinking I can create a virtual switch/toggle in hubitat, that then triggers a task that sends the angle command to my esp8266 every 5 minutes or so.

This sounds achievable yes? I don't expect anyone to actually check for me, just trying to get a feeling if this may work, or to create all this in the arduino sketch instead. I would prefer to do this in habitat as its easier to modify later.