I just want to share that these are by far the best home automation you can have. I love my smart lights, hacked together smart humidifier, smart fans (the vornado dc fans with outlet switches), intake air pump, and air quality monitoring.
But nothing has the quality of life impact of smart blinds. It’s the best, and probably only, way to reliably keep your sleep schedule in sync. Smart lightbulbs - four of the brightest you can buy - are nothing compared to a window on a cloudy day.
Automated blinds can also have a good effect on temperature control. In the summer you can have your south facing blinds automatically close when you leave the house to block out the sun.
I have that, but for my entire house - in the Summer the walls get covered with sun blocking plates, and in the winter the walls are exposed to the rays of the sun.
If you want your own, you can buy it, it's called: Parthenocissus tricuspidata or you can get the Parthenocissus quinquefolia.
So that's a funny thing, your blinds are on the inside of your house so the sun energy is hitting them and dissipating from there. Hopefully your blinds are white and reflecting more of it out than the other surfaces it would otherwise hit. But if you want to make a real temperature difference you need blinds on the other side of the insulated box otherwise known as an awning.
There's just something about waking up to actual sunlight (even filtered through clouds) that no amount of artificial brightness can replicate. It's like your brain knows the difference.
Indoor lighting is about two orders of magnitude dimmer, you’d need 1kW/m*2 (100W/sqft) to emulate a cloudless day at noon, so 20kW just to light up your living room, not accounting for LED losses.
Ya, it’s especially nice if you have a lot of windows and want to open or close them all at once. Lutron blinds were the first improvement we made to the house and was a no brainer even at the highish price we paid.
The blinds shown under this article are pretty ordinary vinyl type blinds that leak a ton of light. I wish I could find blinds thick enough to behave like cardboard over windows, that could also be opened on a daily cadence.
At this point I gave up on blinds and put a shirt over my eyes to sleep. I thought about just covering the windows permanently but I don't relish that idea.
We just had blinds installed from ublockout.com (hope it's not against the rules to link this - I have zero affiliation with them other than being a recent customer). The price was reasonable and they do the job. By far the biggest sources of light in my bedroom now are leakage under doors and various small LEDs (not enough to bother me, but of course there are ways to tackle that too).
Get a sleep mask. They're opaque, so they block more light, and they don't cover your nose or mouth. Contoured sleep masks won't interfere with your eyelashes, helping reduce dry eye further.
It's a total blackout, though it definitely benefits from the window being deeply inset; on a typical bedroom window at midday I expect a bunch of light would find its way around that.
Not sure what country you're from, but "blockout blinds" are likely what you're looking for. They blockout (essentially) all light and are operated like normal blinds.
I don't really understand having trouble with light when you sleep. Personally if I'm tired I happily sleep on summer noon with window opened. Just not in direct sunlight to avoid sunburn. And it's super pleasant experience for me. Better than regular sleep in the darkness at night.
Can't speak for OP, but just get Home Assistant running and play around. It'll work in Docker in anything, but it's a good use for an old Raspberry Pi. There isn't much more of a stack than that, and HA is by far the most polished OSS solution.
It's got some sharp edges - every time I've done a major auto-update it's broken something critical. You can run it alongside other controllers like the Hue Bridge, which is nice to have as a backup (since 90% of what most people connect is smart lighting). Probably the most useful simple automation I have is an motion activated dim light in the bathroom at night, but that's using Hue.
Then look at ESPHome, which is an ecosystem for making your own DIY sensors and controllers that can feed into HA. For example we have a Sensirion air quality sensor that triggers a smart switch connected to a fan if the particulate level gets high when cooking. You can go a very long way with on/off to control non-smart devices, and your sensors don't need to be particularly accurate (like absolute PM2.5) as long as the conditon you trigger on is repeatable.
The only thing to think about is what hardware ecosystem makes sense for you. For example there's at least four different competing standards for connectivity (WiFi, Zigbee, Z-Wave, Matter/Thread, etc). So getting a Zigbee dongle isn't a bad idea because then you can connect any IKEA or Hue device (among others).
The home assistant $100 stand alone device. Pretty seamless user experience. On par with what you would expect for a consumer device as far as UX. Maybe could be a bit more polished but you can do pretty much anything with it as far extending the ecosystem. My only complaint is that writing automations in untyped yaml sucks. Fortunately, if you dump the docs in an LLM it can one shot most things - if you’re trying to do something the gui automation tool doesn’t support.
The rest is zigbee and zwave switches and sensors. You can get cheap ones from ikea. You can get nicer ones from Zooz. I like Apollo for air quality sensors. The humidifier is the German brand Ventura. Zero maintenance. But it’s not smart so I got a power outlet that reports power usage. When it runs out of water the humidifier shuts off and the power goes to zero, so I have an automation that detects that and sends a message via the HA app.
Living in California and having fans move air around from cool rooms to warmer rooms has cut our AC bill significantly as a dc fan is a fraction of power consumption of a whole house AC. And also co2 levels stay much lower. Last week I set up my window fan to blow air in whenever it’s cooler outside then inside.
Fwiw automated blinds in the bedroom are a 100% no brainer benefit. It's wonderful and better than an alarm clock with 0 mental load (set the times to open close across the week once and then never think about them again, you can keep the weekend manual if you like).
As in a lot of home automation actually makes things worse. Replacing a convenient light switch with an app? 100% terrible idea and actually makes things inconvenient, don't automate those.
But the blinds, specifically those in your bedroom? Do it! One of those life hacks that's really not that expensive and makes your life better with 0 cognitive load after initial setup.
> Fwiw automated blinds in the bedroom are a 100% no brainer benefit.
The only problem is finding one that doesn't use undersized plastic gears and cheap electronics that will invariably fail within 10 years. Most of them don't even have manual backups
> As in a lot of home automation actually makes things worse. Replacing a convenient light switch with an app? 100% terrible idea and actually makes things inconvenient, don't automate those.
The key to proper home automation is not to destroy the "normal" functions already in place, but to augment them with automation.
Smart switches that do not function without connectivity are not smart. I discourage new implementation of smart-bulbs too as they break the "normal" bulb-switch function. I discourage smart plugs for the same reason. Same thing with valves. Imagine a valve that cannot be turned on or off manually. Horrific.
An automated porch light that hasn’t been touched in 10years and blinds that had the schedule setup once and forgotten about for 5 years are examples of fantastic automation.
I've got a few lighting automations (turning the lights on when I come home, dimming the lights at night, etc.) and I disagree on the idea that home automation makes things all that much worse.
It doesn't take that much effort to find smart devices with a manual override button. As for lights, the IKEA ones I have are programmed to turn on after cutting the power regardless of smart setting, so all of my physical light switches still work if my automations fail. Toggling them that way kind of screws up the Zigbee network, but I'm not losing any functionality if the Zigbee controller dies.
As for the blinds, you have to place those strategically. You wouldn't be the first one to come out of bed or out of the shower and surprise flashing your neighbours because the smart blinds opened without you noticing.
I've got Home Assistant set up and the app on my phone. But the only light switch I have automated is done with a standalone, battery powered timer with a motor to turn a dumb switch on and off. It's on my porch light so it turns on and off without me needing to be home or paying attention. Only have to override it on Halloween and shift it with the seasons.
> Do it! One of those life hacks that's really not that expensive and makes your life better with 0 cognitive load after initial setup.
I'd love to, actually. But where do I even start? How to choose the solution? I have some old blinds which leak a lot of light and wouldn't mind replacing them. Guess my only hard requirement is for the blinds not to connect to the internet.
I use a silk sleep mask. They’re incredible. Added benefit is that it helps hold your eyelids closed on days when you’re not very sleepy. It’s also one thing I only do when actually attempting to sleep. I swear I get sleepy the second I feel that super-light tension on my head
You are making assumption I want to wake up that early.
Quite opposite - I’m searching for way to completely black out the room since kids will wake up with slightest shred of light, far before daycare starts. And I’m not even living if far lats.
But yeah I still want them for convenience. Problem is I don’t want cables dangling around curtains and battery options are limited.
This comment makes no sense. You choose when you want your automated blinds to open, if you don't want to wake up early, just don't set them to open early?
Kind of jealous of this see an idea, build the thing mindset.
Not for showing off—just making a little tool that quietly helps you every morning.
A motor, some silicone tubing, an old magnetic encoder and somehow it becomes a device that opens your curtains at sunrise. So full of life.
Makes me want to build something for my own daily life, too.
How is it for sound isolation? One thing I like about the OP is attention to isolating the motor from the wall and blinds by soft bits so you don't get amplified motor buzz.
Im not the person you’re asking but this looks like it sits inline to the actual shaft that turns the blinds. Not the pole that hangs down you turn by hand.
I looked at doing this exact thing and on my blinds there’s plenty of room in the top construction of the blinds to put a servo in there you would never see unless you’re looking for it. The rod itself was even not perfectly round so you could 3d print a shape to go around it very easily. I’m honestly shocked there’s not an aftermarket company already doing this exact thing.
What are the child safety considerations to be careful of, with blinds, and with openers?
(I recall seeing warning stickers and design changes on ordinary miniblinds. I suspect that one of the changes involved having multiple pull cords be separate and loose, rather than a fastened together or a single looped cord. But I'd guess that's not the only safety design decision.)
UL 325 covers them and can be read (but not printed or saved) on UL’s website if you register. More dangerous than you might think though the real horror stories are with stage curtains. PSA for hacker news: Safety is the product of a process, not a feature, and standards are written in blood. You don’t get there by surmising, no matter how skilled, clever, or well-intentioned you are.
I think the principle two things are “they can’t pull it off the wall and onto themselves” and “they can’t hang themselves”.
With automatic openers you add “they can’t get snarled up/lose a finger in the mechanism” and “they can’t electrocute themselves”.
I went extremely belt and braces with our blind opener - but it is toddler proof. Attached the lower end of the cord to the ceiling, attached a pulley that hangs on the cord, hung a 1kg weight from it, and used a solenoid from a broken linktap valve to pull a pin that allows the weight to fall and pull the cord.
Even with the blinds open the whole assemblage is entirely out of her reach, and it goes for the opposite effect to the poster’s implementation - blinds slam open in about half a second with a quiet whirr, as I prefer a jarring wakeup, and my wife would sleep through Armageddon. Reset is manual, but that’s fine, closing them is an optional and trivial activity.
What are the safety considerations of smart blinds opening up a bedroom at inopportune moments, such as children playing outside while you're having sex or changing clothes?
Is there a lockout mode for "I/we are not decent" or do the blinds just sort of majestically reveal the bedroom to your backyard/parking lot observers like curtains opening on a feature film?
Powered blinds and curtains are common, but powered home windows are very rare. Even though home control systems which managed windows would be great for heating and cooling. Interesting that they're not as common as electric auto windows.
(Linear induction motors were invented for curtains. Really. Kirsch Electrac)
Would measuring motor current be a better way to determine torque? Not an expert but seems like you could sense voltage across a fairly small shunt to do it.
Motor current is a workable, but generally unsatisfactory, proxy for torque when using heavily geared motors. Far better to measure output torque directly if you can, which is what's being done here using what is essentially a series elastic mechanism (itself a very common way of implementing torque sensing).
To elaborate more, current sensing is only "better" in an ease-of-implementation sense, in that a lot of motor drivers already have current sensing built in/easily added. For some applications this is good-enough, but in terms of estimating "real number" torque from current, it can take a lot of work to characterize for geared motors.
Motor current is an excellent way to measure torque and is what is done in real-world settings all the time. As a hobbyist you might have to settle for relative torque if you aren't in a position to characterize a motor or you don't have manufacturer's data for it.
That's how we did it when I worked on a gate-arm/access control system. I'd monitor current and if a spike occurred I'd back the arm up because it likely hit something.
I have these on all of my blinds and they are amazing. You can sometimes get them on sale for $50-60 each. They come with a solar panel that keeps them charged. You can add a hub that makes them work with HomeKit.
I had thought of this many times, but automating stuff around the house always hits a wall of "do I really want to have less reasons to stand up from my computer?".
Does anyone know if something like this already exists for the heavy duty, built-in shutters they have in Italy? The kind that close and form a barrier over the window and are operated with a flat roll of fabric from inside.
They also have them in Germany. I used to have the manual "flat roll of fabric" in the past, and upgraded the entire rollers in the house to electric ones (I don't know if it's possible to only upgrade the fabric roll -> electric switch without upgrading the entire shutter).
After you have electric-controlled rollers, you can control them via any automation you want by installing a "Shelly Plus 2PM" device behind each switch.
I connect the Shellys to home assistant, and from there, trigger all the rollers to go down a certain number of minutes after sunset. They all rise at a certain time in the morning. You can always trigger them manually too, of course. ChatGPT can spit out very complex YAML for HA if you want to make life easier, your only limit is your imagination.
I’ve seen those somewhere in the Southeast Asia so I think I’ve got what you’re saying. The challenge would be to replace the stopper you currently have (because it’s hard to work around it with a motor) and replace it with something you can activate electrically.
I have a south side back of house open kitchen / dining / living room on my house. 11 Windows.
I have consumer model power roller shades. I love them. If you have a room that gets lots of sun / you like the views, being able to hit a button and open it's an amazing quality of life thing.
"I doubled up the relays feeding the main motor and the heating coil, which gives a lot more headroom on the amperage"
...That's not how that works. One of the relays is going to close first, and those set of contacts will take all the load. Similarly, one set is going to bear all the drama from breaking the connection (and with the motor, there's inductive kickback.)
The correct way to do this is to look up the motor rating for your relay and then size accordingly, not to do dumb shit like "oh I'll just double up these two relays."
Of course he fucks up and uses a resistor from mains to logic, too. Mains and logic should never, ever, ever come anywhere near each other. They're supposed to be physically isolated on a PCB, cutouts in the board, even.
Don't fuck with mains / appliances / HVAC / household water supply if you don't know what you're doing. This guy has no fucking idea what he's doing, and some winter day he's going to come home to a house that's 100 degrees inside and a flooded first floor (notice he didn't connect the water leak sensor?)
Home insurance is scummy, annoying, difficult and weasely in the best of circumstances. The second they figure out you had some chewing gum and duct tape hodgepodge running your dishwasher and that's what caused the flood, they will not only refuse to pay, they'll cancel your coverage on the spot.
Then you find out the joys of not having home insurance coverage on a house with a mortgage.
Edit: Holy christ I missed this part: "It seemed to be due to the push-on jumper cables either becoming too loose after years of jiggling or perhaps oxidizing and self-insulating a bit."
> Don't fuck with mains / appliances / HVAC / household water supply if you don't know what you're doing. This guy has no fucking idea what he's doing
A little OTT. How do people learn to maintain their house or learn to hack improvements? Should we all have your expertise? Perhaps you think paying a qualified installer would be better?
Any work on your home or car or whatever runs risks. Making mistakes is often an important part of learning (and can be expensive). Being a Swiss watch isn't a good compromise.
It is great that you share your knowledge: good feedback is difficult to get.
For building mains devices, you should start by learning about creepage, clearance, double-insulation, the role of earth connections, the requirements for isolation between low voltage and high voltage, etc. Basically a good bit of electrical engineering.
This is different from what you need to know to do house wiring. That's done by following electrical code, which is basically a distillation of the engineering above into a set of relatively easy-to-follow rules.
>How do people learn to maintain their house or learn to hack improvements?
You don't when it comes to mains electric. You hire an electrician who learned through study, training and certification rather than just proding things until it either works or kills you.
Play around with low voltage power all you want but leave mains voltage alone.
"A little OTT. How do people learn to maintain their house or learn to hack improvements? Should we all have your expertise? Perhaps you think paying a qualified installer would be better?"
Start with low voltage instead of high voltage. Learn how it works. When you know enough that you want to move to high volt, don't start with improv -start with repairing outlets, replacing lights, etc. Things that have good directions, are not made up by you, and you can read and study. Read the relevant electrical code portions when you do it, understand why you have to do things the way it tells you to.
As you get better at it, and understand more and more, sure, branch out into your own stuff. But not until you understand it and can be safe.
Messing with mains when you have no idea what you are doing isn't just dangerous to you. It's dangerous to people around you, to future homeowners, to houses around you, etc.
Mistakes in the field are not meant to be part of the learning process, anymore than they would be in any other hazardous-to-life situation. Sure, they happen, and risks exist, but working on mains and high volt panels in any sane place is learned while you have you have someone overseeing your work and stopping you before the mistake is dangerous. People stop and ask whether what they are about to do is the right thing before they do it, not try it and see if it works.
Otherwise, it's not just money, it's your life, or someone else's life.
As for learning having risks and mistakes sometimes being expensive - sure. But having never dove in a pool, would you think it's a good plan to try to do a triple backflip off a ten meter high dive?
After all, any way you learn to dive runs risks, and making mistakes is often an important part of learning (and can be expensive).
You would instead hopefully start small, work your way up, understand things, and be appropriately fearful of things you should be fearful of.
Beyond that - I don't know why people are so tolerant of this kind of thinking with high voltage stuff.
People seem totally intolerant of it when it comes to natural gas lines, for example. Nobody is out there saying "well you know i just started fucking around with my gas line, added some tees and some relays to control some valves. Sometimes it smells funny but who knows. I wrapped some more tape around it and it seems fine most of the time".
Messing with mains is much more dangerous.
Electrical codes are written in blood, the same as all others.
If you want to learn to do home fixing, you learn to be safe first, you start small, and you don't improvise until you can be safe.
Like safety everywhere, it's about understanding, discipline, and process. You can't shortcut it.
Looks to me like he maintained proper mains separation except for the one assembly mistake he admitted to (which wasn't catastrophic, obviously -- his wiring color choices look good for avoiding catastrophic errors). The relay board he's using (I recognize it) is rated for mains voltages, and power-wise is ok-ish for the task (I wouldn't choose it for a commercial product, but for his exact scenario--see below--it's probably ok). Doubling up the relays works fine for the main concern, which is overheating via sustained high amperage, which is how fires start. Surge risk is usually just welding the relay, not starting a fire (unless you're way over spec, which he is not), and it almost always welds shut, not open, so less likely to fail silently into the scenario where it's running on one relay and the sustained amperage becomes a risk, and instead into behaving obviously badly as is typical when motherboards go out (at which point you turn it off and rectify, just like a commercial one). He mentions the whole unit is isolated from mains when not in use, so in that respect it's safer than a commercial one as long as he doesn't run it when away from home/asleep.
Again, not a viable commercial design, but not insane with proper supervision either.
I was curious how you knew about the leak sensor so I did a quick search, and see you're just making things up to complain about -- that model has a turbidity sensor (which I suspect are the NC wires you noticed), but no leak sensor. Oh no! His water might be too turbid! Also the fill valve is wired inline with the float switch (in the machine itself), so it's double-covered for overflow prevention. Flooding seems highly unlikely.
The flaky connections he mentions are the 3 volt ones -- again, not a fire risk. Common for low-voltage contacts like that to get flaky in commercial devices too (e.g., face-plate contacts for thermostats, etc) and without disastrous outcomes. The high-voltage/amperage connections he uses are plugged into the OEM harness, so the same connectors as the OEM motherboard. So, again, seems like you're just making up things to complain about.
I don't want to encourage people to mess with mains power if they're not adequately informed, but it's also not a magical domain you can't learn about with a little research and caution (easier in the US than the UK...). And his gadget worked for years, by the sounds of it, which is better than any commercial appliance I've bought in the last decade...
But I agree he's probably gambling on the home insurance issue, even if his device(s) isn't at fault...
I need to figure something like this out. My bedroom has this arch window about 3-4ft wide that's over 10ft high that I've permanently blacked out so I can sleep in. I'd love an easy way to open it and get light in the day though.
I just want to share that these are by far the best home automation you can have. I love my smart lights, hacked together smart humidifier, smart fans (the vornado dc fans with outlet switches), intake air pump, and air quality monitoring.
But nothing has the quality of life impact of smart blinds. It’s the best, and probably only, way to reliably keep your sleep schedule in sync. Smart lightbulbs - four of the brightest you can buy - are nothing compared to a window on a cloudy day.
Automated blinds can also have a good effect on temperature control. In the summer you can have your south facing blinds automatically close when you leave the house to block out the sun.
Yep, that's a big one. Blinds that respond to sun position or presence can do wonders for keeping indoor temps stable
I have that, but for my entire house - in the Summer the walls get covered with sun blocking plates, and in the winter the walls are exposed to the rays of the sun.
If you want your own, you can buy it, it's called: Parthenocissus tricuspidata or you can get the Parthenocissus quinquefolia.
It really does work!
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So that's a funny thing, your blinds are on the inside of your house so the sun energy is hitting them and dissipating from there. Hopefully your blinds are white and reflecting more of it out than the other surfaces it would otherwise hit. But if you want to make a real temperature difference you need blinds on the other side of the insulated box otherwise known as an awning.
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There's just something about waking up to actual sunlight (even filtered through clouds) that no amount of artificial brightness can replicate. It's like your brain knows the difference.
Indoor lighting is about two orders of magnitude dimmer, you’d need 1kW/m*2 (100W/sqft) to emulate a cloudless day at noon, so 20kW just to light up your living room, not accounting for LED losses.
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Ya, it’s especially nice if you have a lot of windows and want to open or close them all at once. Lutron blinds were the first improvement we made to the house and was a no brainer even at the highish price we paid.
The blinds shown under this article are pretty ordinary vinyl type blinds that leak a ton of light. I wish I could find blinds thick enough to behave like cardboard over windows, that could also be opened on a daily cadence.
At this point I gave up on blinds and put a shirt over my eyes to sleep. I thought about just covering the windows permanently but I don't relish that idea.
We just had blinds installed from ublockout.com (hope it's not against the rules to link this - I have zero affiliation with them other than being a recent customer). The price was reasonable and they do the job. By far the biggest sources of light in my bedroom now are leakage under doors and various small LEDs (not enough to bother me, but of course there are ways to tackle that too).
Get a sleep mask. They're opaque, so they block more light, and they don't cover your nose or mouth. Contoured sleep masks won't interfere with your eyelashes, helping reduce dry eye further.
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I use a pull-down honeycomb shade with a basement window that's behind my TV:
https://www.amazon.ca/Persilux-Blackout-Cellular-Protection-...
It's a total blackout, though it definitely benefits from the window being deeply inset; on a typical bedroom window at midday I expect a bunch of light would find its way around that.
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If you get desperate, you can use painter’s tape and aluminum foil.
Not sure what country you're from, but "blockout blinds" are likely what you're looking for. They blockout (essentially) all light and are operated like normal blinds.
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You can get very nice sleep masks (padded, shaped to your head, etc) for under $30 online (or much less pleasant ones for a few dollars).
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I don't really understand having trouble with light when you sleep. Personally if I'm tired I happily sleep on summer noon with window opened. Just not in direct sunlight to avoid sunburn. And it's super pleasant experience for me. Better than regular sleep in the darkness at night.
Curtains.
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Could we hear more about your home automation stack? I'm looking to get into this myself.
Can't speak for OP, but just get Home Assistant running and play around. It'll work in Docker in anything, but it's a good use for an old Raspberry Pi. There isn't much more of a stack than that, and HA is by far the most polished OSS solution.
It's got some sharp edges - every time I've done a major auto-update it's broken something critical. You can run it alongside other controllers like the Hue Bridge, which is nice to have as a backup (since 90% of what most people connect is smart lighting). Probably the most useful simple automation I have is an motion activated dim light in the bathroom at night, but that's using Hue.
Then look at ESPHome, which is an ecosystem for making your own DIY sensors and controllers that can feed into HA. For example we have a Sensirion air quality sensor that triggers a smart switch connected to a fan if the particulate level gets high when cooking. You can go a very long way with on/off to control non-smart devices, and your sensors don't need to be particularly accurate (like absolute PM2.5) as long as the conditon you trigger on is repeatable.
The only thing to think about is what hardware ecosystem makes sense for you. For example there's at least four different competing standards for connectivity (WiFi, Zigbee, Z-Wave, Matter/Thread, etc). So getting a Zigbee dongle isn't a bad idea because then you can connect any IKEA or Hue device (among others).
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The home assistant $100 stand alone device. Pretty seamless user experience. On par with what you would expect for a consumer device as far as UX. Maybe could be a bit more polished but you can do pretty much anything with it as far extending the ecosystem. My only complaint is that writing automations in untyped yaml sucks. Fortunately, if you dump the docs in an LLM it can one shot most things - if you’re trying to do something the gui automation tool doesn’t support.
The rest is zigbee and zwave switches and sensors. You can get cheap ones from ikea. You can get nicer ones from Zooz. I like Apollo for air quality sensors. The humidifier is the German brand Ventura. Zero maintenance. But it’s not smart so I got a power outlet that reports power usage. When it runs out of water the humidifier shuts off and the power goes to zero, so I have an automation that detects that and sends a message via the HA app.
Living in California and having fans move air around from cool rooms to warmer rooms has cut our AC bill significantly as a dc fan is a fraction of power consumption of a whole house AC. And also co2 levels stay much lower. Last week I set up my window fan to blow air in whenever it’s cooler outside then inside.
I think you can read about OP's automation stack here: https://sifter.org/~simon/journal/20240412.html
Fwiw automated blinds in the bedroom are a 100% no brainer benefit. It's wonderful and better than an alarm clock with 0 mental load (set the times to open close across the week once and then never think about them again, you can keep the weekend manual if you like).
As in a lot of home automation actually makes things worse. Replacing a convenient light switch with an app? 100% terrible idea and actually makes things inconvenient, don't automate those.
But the blinds, specifically those in your bedroom? Do it! One of those life hacks that's really not that expensive and makes your life better with 0 cognitive load after initial setup.
> Fwiw automated blinds in the bedroom are a 100% no brainer benefit.
The only problem is finding one that doesn't use undersized plastic gears and cheap electronics that will invariably fail within 10 years. Most of them don't even have manual backups
> As in a lot of home automation actually makes things worse. Replacing a convenient light switch with an app? 100% terrible idea and actually makes things inconvenient, don't automate those.
The key to proper home automation is not to destroy the "normal" functions already in place, but to augment them with automation.
Smart switches that do not function without connectivity are not smart. I discourage new implementation of smart-bulbs too as they break the "normal" bulb-switch function. I discourage smart plugs for the same reason. Same thing with valves. Imagine a valve that cannot be turned on or off manually. Horrific.
My own scoreboard is how little i think of it.
An automated porch light that hasn’t been touched in 10years and blinds that had the schedule setup once and forgotten about for 5 years are examples of fantastic automation.
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I've got a few lighting automations (turning the lights on when I come home, dimming the lights at night, etc.) and I disagree on the idea that home automation makes things all that much worse.
It doesn't take that much effort to find smart devices with a manual override button. As for lights, the IKEA ones I have are programmed to turn on after cutting the power regardless of smart setting, so all of my physical light switches still work if my automations fail. Toggling them that way kind of screws up the Zigbee network, but I'm not losing any functionality if the Zigbee controller dies.
As for the blinds, you have to place those strategically. You wouldn't be the first one to come out of bed or out of the shower and surprise flashing your neighbours because the smart blinds opened without you noticing.
I've got Home Assistant set up and the app on my phone. But the only light switch I have automated is done with a standalone, battery powered timer with a motor to turn a dumb switch on and off. It's on my porch light so it turns on and off without me needing to be home or paying attention. Only have to override it on Halloween and shift it with the seasons.
Why not program the schedule for Halloween and have it turn on and off with the sun or sun2 integration
> Do it! One of those life hacks that's really not that expensive and makes your life better with 0 cognitive load after initial setup.
I'd love to, actually. But where do I even start? How to choose the solution? I have some old blinds which leak a lot of light and wouldn't mind replacing them. Guess my only hard requirement is for the blinds not to connect to the internet.
My blinds don’t work as an alarm clock for me at all. I sleep with a pillow over my eyes, no amount of light is going to wake me up.
I use a silk sleep mask. They’re incredible. Added benefit is that it helps hold your eyelids closed on days when you’re not very sleepy. It’s also one thing I only do when actually attempting to sleep. I swear I get sleepy the second I feel that super-light tension on my head
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That'll just make it too easy for an assassin.
You are making assumption I want to wake up that early.
Quite opposite - I’m searching for way to completely black out the room since kids will wake up with slightest shred of light, far before daycare starts. And I’m not even living if far lats.
But yeah I still want them for convenience. Problem is I don’t want cables dangling around curtains and battery options are limited.
This comment makes no sense. You choose when you want your automated blinds to open, if you don't want to wake up early, just don't set them to open early?
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Batteries last more than a year and you can get ones with solar panels to recharge them.
I just hard wire mine by going through the cornice with a flush conduit. It's a good place to put the manual shutoff switch as well.
Kind of jealous of this see an idea, build the thing mindset. Not for showing off—just making a little tool that quietly helps you every morning. A motor, some silicone tubing, an old magnetic encoder and somehow it becomes a device that opens your curtains at sunrise. So full of life. Makes me want to build something for my own daily life, too.
If you want something less jank I suggest this https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2071225
3d printed gear box with a servo that sits inline with the shaft. Invisible outside of the blinds if you route the cables correctly.
I controll mine with esphome and home assistant rock solid for years
How is it for sound isolation? One thing I like about the OP is attention to isolating the motor from the wall and blinds by soft bits so you don't get amplified motor buzz.
If this is your model, would you mind making the first pic a picture of it installed? It's hard for me to visualize how it is supposed to work.
Im not the person you’re asking but this looks like it sits inline to the actual shaft that turns the blinds. Not the pole that hangs down you turn by hand.
I looked at doing this exact thing and on my blinds there’s plenty of room in the top construction of the blinds to put a servo in there you would never see unless you’re looking for it. The rod itself was even not perfectly round so you could 3d print a shape to go around it very easily. I’m honestly shocked there’s not an aftermarket company already doing this exact thing.
What are the child safety considerations to be careful of, with blinds, and with openers?
(I recall seeing warning stickers and design changes on ordinary miniblinds. I suspect that one of the changes involved having multiple pull cords be separate and loose, rather than a fastened together or a single looped cord. But I'd guess that's not the only safety design decision.)
UL 325 covers them and can be read (but not printed or saved) on UL’s website if you register. More dangerous than you might think though the real horror stories are with stage curtains. PSA for hacker news: Safety is the product of a process, not a feature, and standards are written in blood. You don’t get there by surmising, no matter how skilled, clever, or well-intentioned you are.
It totally can be saved if you try hard enough (and are not afraid of a pretty scary legal warning in the free view feature).
If the UL devs read this: if you want to cut your AWS bill, perhaps don’t send the images as BMP?
I think the principle two things are “they can’t pull it off the wall and onto themselves” and “they can’t hang themselves”.
With automatic openers you add “they can’t get snarled up/lose a finger in the mechanism” and “they can’t electrocute themselves”.
I went extremely belt and braces with our blind opener - but it is toddler proof. Attached the lower end of the cord to the ceiling, attached a pulley that hangs on the cord, hung a 1kg weight from it, and used a solenoid from a broken linktap valve to pull a pin that allows the weight to fall and pull the cord.
Even with the blinds open the whole assemblage is entirely out of her reach, and it goes for the opposite effect to the poster’s implementation - blinds slam open in about half a second with a quiet whirr, as I prefer a jarring wakeup, and my wife would sleep through Armageddon. Reset is manual, but that’s fine, closing them is an optional and trivial activity.
What are the safety considerations of smart blinds opening up a bedroom at inopportune moments, such as children playing outside while you're having sex or changing clothes?
Is there a lockout mode for "I/we are not decent" or do the blinds just sort of majestically reveal the bedroom to your backyard/parking lot observers like curtains opening on a feature film?
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Powered blinds and curtains are common, but powered home windows are very rare. Even though home control systems which managed windows would be great for heating and cooling. Interesting that they're not as common as electric auto windows.
(Linear induction motors were invented for curtains. Really. Kirsch Electrac)
> Linear induction motors were invented for curtains
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Wheatstone would like a word
The idea of waking up to a silent, 8-minute reveal of daylight is honestly kind of poetic
Would measuring motor current be a better way to determine torque? Not an expert but seems like you could sense voltage across a fairly small shunt to do it.
Motor current is a workable, but generally unsatisfactory, proxy for torque when using heavily geared motors. Far better to measure output torque directly if you can, which is what's being done here using what is essentially a series elastic mechanism (itself a very common way of implementing torque sensing).
To elaborate more, current sensing is only "better" in an ease-of-implementation sense, in that a lot of motor drivers already have current sensing built in/easily added. For some applications this is good-enough, but in terms of estimating "real number" torque from current, it can take a lot of work to characterize for geared motors.
Motor current is an excellent way to measure torque and is what is done in real-world settings all the time. As a hobbyist you might have to settle for relative torque if you aren't in a position to characterize a motor or you don't have manufacturer's data for it.
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That's how we did it when I worked on a gate-arm/access control system. I'd monitor current and if a spike occurred I'd back the arm up because it likely hit something.
I have these on all of my blinds and they are amazing. You can sometimes get them on sale for $50-60 each. They come with a solar panel that keeps them charged. You can add a hub that makes them work with HomeKit.
https://us.switch-bot.com/products/switchbot-blind-tilt
For roller shades, I've had success with Ryse SmartShade [0] + their WiFi hub + Home Assistant.
Setup was not straightforward at all, and I have 10 windows, but it was worth it in the end.
You can write automations in YAML (or TypeScript with [1]), and your blinds can also be controllable with Siri or whatever voice assistant you like.
[0]: https://www.helloryse.com/products/rysesmartshade
[1]: https://docs.digital-alchemy.app/
Great job! I bet so many of us (self included) had this nagging need to do this, but you actually followed through. Kudos!
I had thought of this many times, but automating stuff around the house always hits a wall of "do I really want to have less reasons to stand up from my computer?".
Does anyone know if something like this already exists for the heavy duty, built-in shutters they have in Italy? The kind that close and form a barrier over the window and are operated with a flat roll of fabric from inside.
They also have them in Germany. I used to have the manual "flat roll of fabric" in the past, and upgraded the entire rollers in the house to electric ones (I don't know if it's possible to only upgrade the fabric roll -> electric switch without upgrading the entire shutter).
After you have electric-controlled rollers, you can control them via any automation you want by installing a "Shelly Plus 2PM" device behind each switch.
I connect the Shellys to home assistant, and from there, trigger all the rollers to go down a certain number of minutes after sunset. They all rise at a certain time in the morning. You can always trigger them manually too, of course. ChatGPT can spit out very complex YAML for HA if you want to make life easier, your only limit is your imagination.
I’ve seen those somewhere in the Southeast Asia so I think I’ve got what you’re saying. The challenge would be to replace the stopper you currently have (because it’s hard to work around it with a motor) and replace it with something you can activate electrically.
Yes, the keyword you are looking for is "tapparella motorizzata".
I have a south side back of house open kitchen / dining / living room on my house. 11 Windows.
I have consumer model power roller shades. I love them. If you have a room that gets lots of sun / you like the views, being able to hit a button and open it's an amazing quality of life thing.
My mom's old house had a non-smart remote controlled Bosch drape opener about 6 meters / 20 ft long that was probably several hundred $.
I wondered what an "homebrew automated" was and by which mechanism it could blind the person who opened it...
Sorry, I had to post this :|
if Apple made window blinds...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv6EMd8dlQk
Person just wanted to automate a few "dumb" appliances but ended up building his own system (software and hardware) to do this.
I wish I had time to bike shed like this. Just learning, tinkering, and enjoying life.
That's puttering, tinkering, or experimenting. It's a good thing.
Bikeshedding is wasting time on trivial and pointless efforts or discussions. It's a bad thing. :)
https://phk.freebsd.dk/sagas/bikeshed/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality
"I doubled up the relays feeding the main motor and the heating coil, which gives a lot more headroom on the amperage"
...That's not how that works. One of the relays is going to close first, and those set of contacts will take all the load. Similarly, one set is going to bear all the drama from breaking the connection (and with the motor, there's inductive kickback.)
The correct way to do this is to look up the motor rating for your relay and then size accordingly, not to do dumb shit like "oh I'll just double up these two relays."
Of course he fucks up and uses a resistor from mains to logic, too. Mains and logic should never, ever, ever come anywhere near each other. They're supposed to be physically isolated on a PCB, cutouts in the board, even.
Don't fuck with mains / appliances / HVAC / household water supply if you don't know what you're doing. This guy has no fucking idea what he's doing, and some winter day he's going to come home to a house that's 100 degrees inside and a flooded first floor (notice he didn't connect the water leak sensor?)
Home insurance is scummy, annoying, difficult and weasely in the best of circumstances. The second they figure out you had some chewing gum and duct tape hodgepodge running your dishwasher and that's what caused the flood, they will not only refuse to pay, they'll cancel your coverage on the spot.
Then you find out the joys of not having home insurance coverage on a house with a mortgage.
Edit: Holy christ I missed this part: "It seemed to be due to the push-on jumper cables either becoming too loose after years of jiggling or perhaps oxidizing and self-insulating a bit."
That is how you start a fire, people.
> Don't fuck with mains / appliances / HVAC / household water supply if you don't know what you're doing. This guy has no fucking idea what he's doing
A little OTT. How do people learn to maintain their house or learn to hack improvements? Should we all have your expertise? Perhaps you think paying a qualified installer would be better?
Any work on your home or car or whatever runs risks. Making mistakes is often an important part of learning (and can be expensive). Being a Swiss watch isn't a good compromise.
It is great that you share your knowledge: good feedback is difficult to get.
For building mains devices, you should start by learning about creepage, clearance, double-insulation, the role of earth connections, the requirements for isolation between low voltage and high voltage, etc. Basically a good bit of electrical engineering.
This is different from what you need to know to do house wiring. That's done by following electrical code, which is basically a distillation of the engineering above into a set of relatively easy-to-follow rules.
>How do people learn to maintain their house or learn to hack improvements?
You don't when it comes to mains electric. You hire an electrician who learned through study, training and certification rather than just proding things until it either works or kills you.
Play around with low voltage power all you want but leave mains voltage alone.
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"A little OTT. How do people learn to maintain their house or learn to hack improvements? Should we all have your expertise? Perhaps you think paying a qualified installer would be better?"
Start with low voltage instead of high voltage. Learn how it works. When you know enough that you want to move to high volt, don't start with improv -start with repairing outlets, replacing lights, etc. Things that have good directions, are not made up by you, and you can read and study. Read the relevant electrical code portions when you do it, understand why you have to do things the way it tells you to.
As you get better at it, and understand more and more, sure, branch out into your own stuff. But not until you understand it and can be safe.
Messing with mains when you have no idea what you are doing isn't just dangerous to you. It's dangerous to people around you, to future homeowners, to houses around you, etc.
Mistakes in the field are not meant to be part of the learning process, anymore than they would be in any other hazardous-to-life situation. Sure, they happen, and risks exist, but working on mains and high volt panels in any sane place is learned while you have you have someone overseeing your work and stopping you before the mistake is dangerous. People stop and ask whether what they are about to do is the right thing before they do it, not try it and see if it works.
Otherwise, it's not just money, it's your life, or someone else's life.
As for learning having risks and mistakes sometimes being expensive - sure. But having never dove in a pool, would you think it's a good plan to try to do a triple backflip off a ten meter high dive?
After all, any way you learn to dive runs risks, and making mistakes is often an important part of learning (and can be expensive).
You would instead hopefully start small, work your way up, understand things, and be appropriately fearful of things you should be fearful of.
Beyond that - I don't know why people are so tolerant of this kind of thinking with high voltage stuff.
People seem totally intolerant of it when it comes to natural gas lines, for example. Nobody is out there saying "well you know i just started fucking around with my gas line, added some tees and some relays to control some valves. Sometimes it smells funny but who knows. I wrapped some more tape around it and it seems fine most of the time".
Messing with mains is much more dangerous. Electrical codes are written in blood, the same as all others.
If you want to learn to do home fixing, you learn to be safe first, you start small, and you don't improvise until you can be safe.
Like safety everywhere, it's about understanding, discipline, and process. You can't shortcut it.
Looks to me like he maintained proper mains separation except for the one assembly mistake he admitted to (which wasn't catastrophic, obviously -- his wiring color choices look good for avoiding catastrophic errors). The relay board he's using (I recognize it) is rated for mains voltages, and power-wise is ok-ish for the task (I wouldn't choose it for a commercial product, but for his exact scenario--see below--it's probably ok). Doubling up the relays works fine for the main concern, which is overheating via sustained high amperage, which is how fires start. Surge risk is usually just welding the relay, not starting a fire (unless you're way over spec, which he is not), and it almost always welds shut, not open, so less likely to fail silently into the scenario where it's running on one relay and the sustained amperage becomes a risk, and instead into behaving obviously badly as is typical when motherboards go out (at which point you turn it off and rectify, just like a commercial one). He mentions the whole unit is isolated from mains when not in use, so in that respect it's safer than a commercial one as long as he doesn't run it when away from home/asleep.
Again, not a viable commercial design, but not insane with proper supervision either.
I was curious how you knew about the leak sensor so I did a quick search, and see you're just making things up to complain about -- that model has a turbidity sensor (which I suspect are the NC wires you noticed), but no leak sensor. Oh no! His water might be too turbid! Also the fill valve is wired inline with the float switch (in the machine itself), so it's double-covered for overflow prevention. Flooding seems highly unlikely.
The flaky connections he mentions are the 3 volt ones -- again, not a fire risk. Common for low-voltage contacts like that to get flaky in commercial devices too (e.g., face-plate contacts for thermostats, etc) and without disastrous outcomes. The high-voltage/amperage connections he uses are plugged into the OEM harness, so the same connectors as the OEM motherboard. So, again, seems like you're just making up things to complain about.
I don't want to encourage people to mess with mains power if they're not adequately informed, but it's also not a magical domain you can't learn about with a little research and caution (easier in the US than the UK...). And his gadget worked for years, by the sounds of it, which is better than any commercial appliance I've bought in the last decade...
But I agree he's probably gambling on the home insurance issue, even if his device(s) isn't at fault...
Nadine would be proud.
I love the choice of enclose.
I need to figure something like this out. My bedroom has this arch window about 3-4ft wide that's over 10ft high that I've permanently blacked out so I can sleep in. I'd love an easy way to open it and get light in the day though.
Funny I used that white magnetic encoder and now I see it everywhere