Greetings from a new ST User. I just recently got myself a ST Hub V2 for the sole purpose of using it in my recently completed new house. The time has reached for me to fit in blinds/curtains on my windows and I am still lost in choosing which path to follow. I have done a lot of readings in this community and outside as well. The few roadblocks that I encountered was
i) Somfy motors with ZRTSI - only that ZRTSI has no EU version.
ii) Generic AC motor (i.e. Dooya from China) with Fibaro FGRM-222 - only that FGRM-222 does not have an officially or unofficially supported solution.
The only not-so-elegant solutions found
i) Tearing down a Somfy RF remote and manage pushing of buttons with Liner relays - Canāt do with mutichannel RF remote.
ii) Controlling Somfy with Domoticz via RPi2 - I should just throw away ST and use Domoticz exclusively?
Are there any other solutions or are we, EU users, screwed in the blinds/curtain department?
I am pretty desperate here to see which path to take for my new houseā¦
I have 5 of the fibaro roller shutter devices installed already, desperately waiting for them to be supported. Full up and down works. Nothing in between. Donāt understand we they donāt just integrate them. Probably less than half a days work for a developer.
Smart things staff donāt officially review these forums. You can write to support@smartthings.co.UK and ask that way. Or perhaps @aaron can find out for you.
There are two options I know of, although they are more costly than some of the others. First, Serena shades from Lutron donāt integrate directly with smartthings, but both smartthings and Lutron Serena have an IFTTT channel and you can get quite good indirect integration that way. I know these window coverings are available in the UK, but I donāt know what pricing is likely to be. I believe you have to get them from an authorised Lutron partner.
Second, you can use Logitech Harmony as a āman in the middleā for indirect integration. You could get in touch with them to see what UK window covering options they support. There is an official smartthings/harmony integration so basically anything you can do in a Harmony activity you can integrate with SmartThings.
I donāt know anything about this particular contractor, but this does a good job of showing the line.
You can find official suppliers on the Lutron site:
Also, If youāre willing to put something together yourself, there are people using a combination of a standard curtain motor and the Fibaro zwave blinds controller. Thereās an article about it here:
And there have been one or two community members who have posted about it. Itās one of those projects thatās straight forward without being simple. And of course, you would be using SmartThings rather than Vera.
Finally, the following fairly recent thread discusses a number of different options with some input from UK members. Most of these are based on the same idea: purchase one standard curtain motor and then control it with a separate device that can communicate with smartthings.
[quote=āJDRoberts, post:6, topic:47599, full:trueā]
Second, you can use Logitech Harmony as a āman in the middleā for indirect integration. [/quote]
Logitech Harmony Hub + Somfy URTSI II is something I am exploring now. The problem is there is not much info out there on successful integrations.
I should add that the Z wave protocol requires that every certified device accept a ābasicā command (thatās a Z wave term) which typically means on/off.
For this reason, itās very common for a Z wave set up to include new devices simply as a switch until custom code is written to support them. It works fine in a lot of circumstances. It might be a water valve, it might be an in wall relay, it might be a lightbulb.
A dimmer switch is also used as a generic that includes a percentage change. Sometimes it will be used for a thermostat, sometimes for a motor control, sometimes for a fan.
So defining the Fibaro blind control as a dimmer for now is pretty standard practice. That then gives you on, off, and set to a percentage, which again is often enough for many use cases.
There may be a lot of other features that the manufacturer has included that youād like to get to eventually, but as long as it certified for Z wave, you should be able to get this basic functionality.
I was just reading the same post you quoted. Having read the FGRM-222 manual, I am almost sure that functionality will not be 100% in Smartthings. Oh well, maybe Iāll just use this as a platform for my Groovy lessons.
Yeah, it all comes down to exactly the features you want and the amount of time, money and effort effort you want to put into getting those features.
BTW, as far as learning groovy, SmartThings uses its own groovy variant and since you canāt load your own libraries, youāre kind of stuck with their idiosyncrasies. Again, that may be enough for what you want especially if what you want is to develop within the smartthings ecosystem. If youāre interested in learning groovy for other projects, I would go to a more open environment and use standard groovy.
I Use the fibaro firm-222 with no problem on my window shades.
the only thing I did was setting up the device handler - āzwave metering dimmerā and adding a āstopā commend.
Iām using (in Spain) somfy shades with RTS coupled with a Raspberry Pi with domoticz installedā¦ then a few apps/device handlers by @dudz40 to connect them to STā¦ works perfect!
Iām curious why people with domoticz bother with smartthings. Iām no expert in that system but doesnāt domoticz have everything you already need in an HA system?
