Why Automate your Blinds?
Adding home automation to your blinds brings comfort and convenience to your smart home, but also helps reduce your energy usage and increases your home's security. And, it's not just blinds - any awning, sun shade, shutter or even garage door can be controlled automatically or remotely.
Comfort
Your blinds can be set to automatically close when the sun goes down, making your home more cosy and comfortable. In the morning, they can open slowly, or even to a preset position to wake you gently.
Convenience
No need to go around your home opening and closing blinds, they can look after themselves based on automatic schedules, or you can operate them from your smartphone whether you're at home or away. You'll never forget to close them again - even if you're on holiday!
Saving Energy
You can significantly reduce your energy costs by automating your blinds to react to temperature and light level. Lowering the blinds, when the temperature rises with the sun streaming through the windows, will lower the room temperature - saving air conditioning costs. Opening them during cold winter months to harvest heat from the sun and then closing them as night draws in can save heating costs, allowing your Smart Home Heating to run even more efficiently.
Security
Having shutters and blinds close automatically at night or when you're away from home increases your home's security. The less of your valuables that can be see from outside, the less chance that a burglar will take a chance on breaking into your home. If you're away on vacation, you can have the blinds open and close at irregular intervals, making it look like you're still at home.
Child Safe by Design
New legislation has been introduced governing how blinds that operated by chains or looped cords are installed. This follows a number of tragic incidents involving young children becoming entangled in blind cords/chains. Wirelessly operated blinds have no cord or chain, so there is no hazard to young children as they are 'Child Safe by Design".
Less Maintenance
Manually operating blinds, whether it's pulling them down or pulling a chain, takes a toll on the blinds. And if you've ever seen how children slam them down, you'll know what I mean. Sooner or later they'll need maintaining or fixing as they've broken. Motorised blinds work in a smoother way, minimising wear and tear, and extending their life. Automating your blinds and shutters saves money in more ways than one.
Automated blinds - your reality
Bringing wireless control to your blinds and shutters has real benefits and it's relatively easy to do using home automation systems from Vesternet.
Z-Wave, Zigbee & WiFi Smart Home Controllers offer a great range of home automation features allowing them to expand with you and control many more things around your home.
Z-Wave, Zigbee and WiFi are wireless home automation technologies supported by many vendors. They enable you to easily build a system that covers your complete home and will automatically tell you which blinds and shutters are open or closed - you always know what's happening in your home.
Choosing Blinds and how to Control them
There are lots of types of blind and shutter systems available, so it's best to research your options and choose them carefully. We have products that work with almost all kinds of blind and shutter, including Roller, Roman, Venetian, Vertical, Shutter, Awning and even garage doors. As well as the products listed below we have a huge range of installation and configuration guides, all backed by our renowned technical support.
There are two broad categories of blinds - ones that have motors or controls fitted so they can work open and close automatically, and those that have no motorised control.
Motorised Blinds
These blind systems already have an integrated motor to open/close the blinds. In these systems you just need a way to control the motor from your home automation system.
Mains Powered - 230V
These are one of the most common systems available. They're operated by having the motor directly powered via a wireless controller, this drives the motor in either direction and allows you to pause it or send it to a 'favourite' position.
Fibaro Roller Shutter 3
- Purposely designed to work with all types of 230V roller blind, shutter or awning motor.
- This tiny module can fit behind a wall switch or close to the motor.
- Power Monitoring and Auto-Calibration
Qubino Shutter Plus
- Purposely designed to work with all types of 230V roller blind, shutter or awning motor.
- This tiny module can fit behind a wall switch or close to the motor.
- Flexible switch and sensor inputs
- Power Monitoring and Auto-Calibration
Aeotec Nano Shutter
- Purposely designed to work with all types of 230V roller blind, shutter or awning motor.
- This tiny module can fit behind a wall switch or close to the motor.
Vesternet Z-Wave Motor Controller | Vesternet Zigbee Motor Controller
- Purposely designed to work with all types of 230V roller blind, shutter or awning motor.
- This tiny module can fit behind a wall switch or close to the motor.
WiFi Shelly 2.5
- Purposely designed to work with all types of 230V roller blind, shutter or awning motor.
- This tiny module can fit behind a wall switch or close to the motor.
- Power Monitoring and Auto-Calibration
Low-Voltage - 24V
Low-voltage blinds typically work on 24V. There are two main types of DC motor used in blinds.
Polarity Reversal motors only have two wires, the 'polarity' of the DC power supply is reversed to make them move in one direction or the other. The other type of motor typically has five wires, they have a fixed power supply and then have external (wall) switches to determine which direction it moves.
Qubino Shutter DC
- Specifically designed for DC blinds using 'Polarity Reversal'.
- This tiny module can fit behind a wall switch or close to the motor.
- Flexible switch and sensor inputs
- Power Monitoring
Fibaro Double Smart Module
- Two channel relay that can be used to control low-voltage motors which use external switch control.
- Small module can fit behind a wall switch or close to the motor.
- Can be powered from 24 - 30VDC - Controlling 24V Blind Motors with Fibaro Relays
Heltun Relay Switch Quinto
- Five channel relay that can be used to control low-voltage motors which use external switch control.
- Small module can fit behind a wall switch or close to the motor.
- Unique "opposite locking" feature that prevents opposite outputs from being on simultaneously.
- Can be powered from 24 - 48VDC.
WiFi Shelly Plus 2PM
- Can be powered from 24VDC.
- This tiny module can fit behind a wall switch or close to the motor.
- Power Monitoring and Auto-Calibration
Low Voltage - InfraRed
Many low-voltage systems also include an InfraRed controller. These systems may include a wired control unit, in which case you may use a wireless Relay like the previous example.
The alternative is to use a Smart Home Controller that features an Infra Red transmitter / receiver to send IR commands to your blinds. The benefit of this approach is that it's quick and easy, with no wiring involved.
Wireless - 230V and 24V
There are a number of systems coming to market that have in-built wireless control. These are rarely Z-Wave compatible, but they do often use wireless systems that can be controlled from the home automation controller. These can be controlled by combining the home automation controller with an additional transceiver.
RFXcom RFXtrx433E
- Connects to the home automation controller allowing it to control 433MHz blinds and shutters.
- Supports a wide range of blind types including Forrest, Harris Curtain, RollerTrol and Somfy
- See below for more technical information.
Technical Guides
These guides and videos show how these various systems can be integrated with Vesternet's home automation products. Many are based on Somfy systems, but the same principles apply whichever blind system you're using.
- 230V Blinds - Controlling Somfy 230V Blinds with Fibaro Roller Shutter Controller
- 24V Somfy Blinds - Controlling Somfy 24V 30DCT Blinds with Fibaro Relays
- InfraRed - Controlling Somfy IRS300 Blinds with Fibaro Relays
- Wireless - Controlling Somfy RTS (Wireless) Blinds with VERA and RFX
- Pull-Cord Roller Blinds - Controlling traditional pull-cord roller blinds with Soma
- Control - Controlling blinds in VERA based on Environmental Conditions
- Control - Controlling blinds in Fibaro based on Environmental Conditions
- Where to Buy - Where to buy Blinds
Getting Help and Advice
We can advise you on all aspects of home automation, and even though we don't sell blinds and shutters, we can recommend some companies that will help you select the right blinds for your home - including custom made solutions.
