How to motorize vertical blinds

[Ryan780]

Wow, you are erielie in my head @Comolongo. I was just working on this right now. Using this setup here:

[RELEASE] ESP8266 / Arduino servo controlled smart blinds

Here we go! This is a re-think of the simple smart blinds created by @C_Hobbs. The code now supports positioning the blinds, not just open and close. You can also add a switch to the blinds for those times that you just want to move them a bit manually. I used a custom designed gear box I printed on my 3d printer to connect the servo to the shaft that controls the window blind angle. This is my first SmartThings project. I will clean up this first post as time allows and I get some pictures taken. For the servo I used a $4 TowerPro clone from AliExpress model MG996. I found that the D1 Mini WeMos board fit easier in the window blind header than the NodeMCU. Both should work. The largest window I have in my house is a picture window that is about 6’ and this setup works for that. Any sma…

I sucessfully got all 3 sets of horizontal blinds working in my house. I am working on modifying the housing and gear to fit my vertical blinds. Here’s a pic of what I’ve got so far.

The problem I’m running into is that the gear that allows for wand rotation also acts like a brake. Rotating the control rod without rotating the wand just doesn’t work. So, I took my blinda apart today and figured out how to get that control off and added another rod to the first blind in the set. That is all ready, now I’m just waiting to get my printing done to see if the control housing and gear work on my vertical blinds.

I’ve looked at things like EZWand and SmartWand but both are VERY expensive (Smart Wand is $140 for everything) plus, I’m not sure about integration with ST. EZWand looks like it might but the remote only moves them. There’s no memory in the wand itself to command to go to this spot. So, integration with ST would be VERY VERY difficult I think. This way, if it doesn’t work, all i’m out is the $10 servo and $10 for the 3d printing from 3d Hubs. If anyone has a better idea, I’m all ears.