Blinds/Shades/Curtain Control - No solutions for us EU Smartthings owners?

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 :thumbsdown:
i) Tearing down a Somfy RF remote and manage pushing of buttons with Liner relays - Canā€™t do with mutichannel RF remote. :thumbsdown:

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€¦

Thanks everyone for your advise.

Cheers.

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Thanks for the suggestion @sidjohn1 but I need a solution to pull up the whole blind. This wonā€™t work on curtains, I suppose?

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. Donā€™t understand we they donā€™t just integrate them. Probably less than half a days work for a developer.

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Can Smartthings Staff give some pointers please?

Smart things staff donā€™t 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 donā€™t 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 donā€™t 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 ā€œman 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 donā€™t 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:

http://www.lutron.com/europe/Products/Pages/ShadingSystems/SerenaShades/Overview.aspx

Also, If youā€™re willing to put something together yourself, there are people using a combination of a standard curtain motor and the Fibaro zwave blinds controller. Thereā€™s an article about it here:

And there have been one or two community members who have posted about it. Itā€™s one of those projects thatā€™s 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.

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[quote=ā€œJDRoberts, post:6, topic:47599, full:trueā€]
Second, you can use Logitech Harmony as a ā€œman 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.

This is my most preferred and cheapest solutions. But Fibaro FGRM-222 cannot be integrated into Smartthings, officially and unofficially.

Smartthings updated their Z wave from where in late 2014, and the V2 hub was updated yet again as all of those hubs are Z Wave plus. :sunglasses:

Consequently, there are a number of members using the FGRM 222 with unofficial integrations, although Iā€™m not sure they can access all featuresā€¦

You also have the option to just add it as a Z wave dimmer, which gives you on off and setting it to a percentage which is enough for a lot of people.

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I should add that the Z wave protocol requires that every certified device accept a ā€œbasicā€ command (thatā€™s a Z wave term) which typically means on/off.

For this reason, itā€™s 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 youā€™d like to get to eventually, but as long as it certified for Z wave, you should be able to get this basic functionality.

Thanks @JDRoberts

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 Iā€™ll just use this as a platform for my Groovy lessons.

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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. :sunglasses:

BTW, as far as learning groovy, SmartThings uses its own groovy variant and since you canā€™t load your own libraries, youā€™re 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 youā€™re 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 - ā€œzwave metering dimmerā€ and adding a ā€˜stopā€™ commend.

works grate for my needs.
Gil :slight_smile:

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Hi @gilh

How do you set parameters on the FGRM-222? Default settings may not be suitable for meā€¦ :sweat:

Hi @teohwk,
I didnā€™t needed to changed any parameters, the defaults was good for meā€¦
So I canā€™t really help you there, Sorryā€¦ :pensive:

Gil :slight_smile:

Another option to control RTS (Somfy), IO and other devices is the TaHoma box:

Itā€™s not cheap but it works and I just created the SmartThings integration:

Iā€™m 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!

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Iā€™m curious why people with domoticz bother with smartthings. Iā€™m no expert in that system but doesnā€™t domoticz have everything you already need in an HA system?