It's curtains I tell ya ...

[linuxha]

My wife wants our downstairs lights not to go on if the blinds are open. The vertical blinds must be twisted before you attempt to open or close them and they're about 12 feet long. So my solution is to a get blind/curtain/drape control system. I currently have support for X10 (but let's not) and Insteon but I can go hard wired control.

So, what's available and what recommendations do you have?

Thanks

 

[electron]

I have the same type of blinds, would love to do this as well, so do post an update if you figure out an affordable solution

 

[roussell]

I hate how expensive 'seemingly' simple blind and curtain control is. Neil are you wanting to craft your own solution or buy something? If you wanted to roll your own it would seem like a web control board and a handful motors, micro switches and relays could give you what you want pretty inexpensively.

Terry

 

[linuxha]

I hate how expensive 'seemingly' simple blind and curtain control is. Neil are you wanting to craft your own solution or buy something? If you wanted to roll your own it would seem like a web control board and a handful motors, micro switches and relays could give you what you want pretty inexpensively.

Terry

I think a little of both, I may get the basic Somfy model (their headquarters is only a few miles from my house, weird) and build the second stage from either the webcontrol board (~$40, that's a good price) but controlling both. or one of the many boards I already have (maybe a Raven) or an XBee. This has to have high SAF (Spouse Acceptance Factor), especially since I've just managed to restore full PLC HA (after several years of trouble).

The reason for the two stage approach is the 2 controls. I also need to have manual override (just in case). One more project on the stack. :nutz:

 

[twilo123]

somfy has a zwave to ip control board i saw at cedia recently also. so that may be an option is you use zwave. we have tested several regular zwave motor controls for blinds also in our iphone app here Total Control Z-Wave Automation Edition. Look at the bottom of the page and you can see in the spreadsheet which ones we have tested. they all work pretty well. those are strictly zwave though. the somfy is a zwave to ip device i believe. they also have some regular direct ip control devices also i believe.