iBlinds - Home Automation For Your Window Blinds (Z-Wave)

And that is just the estimate. I would be surprised if we see it this year.

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Color me skeptical. I am a backer and the lack of regular simple updates is not confidence-inspiring. The recent update was February 19 and referred to six months until production, so that puts it squarely into Q3.

Most of the backer comments are requests for refunds.

Another thing, on the KS site there is a “PreOrder” button that links to IGG; where it still has March 2017 for delivery.

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How are these companies addressing the patent issues?

MySmartBlinds has been on the retail market ( including being sold at Home Depot) for over two years and holds over 50 patents on retrofitting smart blinds. They are going to have a really strong position for protecting their patents.

Are the kickstarter project companies just going to license their patents? Because otherwise I don’t see how they ever come to market in the US. So far I haven’t seen any that have alternative patents, although maybe I missed that.

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Interesting point. Curious if the Bluetooth vs z-wave factor is enough. Probably patented the tilt mechanism separately which is the sticky point. Man this stuff is expensive. My DIY ones are about $40 per window. Even less for windows that are right next to each other that don’t need separate controllers. I use particle Photon which could save me like $15 on top of that if I switched to some of these cheap esp chipsets.
Ah what times we live in. Hope all is well old friend @JDRoberts .

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Do you have a guide for making the $40 kit?

Hello,

The project is here:

It’s based off of this project:

I’ve recently taken everything off of my GitHub due to personal reasons. I’m thinking of putting most things back up based on demand.

Let me know if you need the code, I’ll be very busy until the weekend so it probably won’t happen until then.

Good luck!

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Resurrecting this old thread! I’ve been following the updates on IGG waiting to see if it actually materializes before I order, and they say they’ve started shipping to the early backers. I’d love to hear reviews if anyone here receives theirs and gets them working (or can’t get them working!).

Got my kit yesterday. Unfortunately I am moving next month so can’t install for awhile. First impressions are mixed. There are areas where the manufacturing looks amateur, like around the charging port. Also the battery connector is orange on the unit, but the cable plugging is white. The optional solar panel fell apart as i removed it from the box. Small things that I would expect from a more experienced company. Device pulled right into smartthings classic. It saw it as a switch. I was able to change it to a Zwave window shade in the IDE.

image

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I got my set up and running , any suggestion for a smart app to manager them ? It good old fashion WebCoRE ?

Just ordered a set of these to try out. Anybody know if they work with the new app? Based on their DTH, doesn’t look like it.

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Works just fine for me.

But I am not able to join secure mode

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Cool! Thanks!

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Did you get yours set up? How do you like them? I’m still on the fence about spending the money but they’re “on sale” at the moment (I feel like they have been for a while).

I’m also curious how the solar panels are performing for the people who’ve had them for a while. Are they sufficient to keep the battery topped off?

I like them! The instructions are a little weird regarding the initial battery charge, but once setup the solar panel has kept mine at 100% with pretty heavy use the first day and two uses a day after on a good sized sets of blinds.

I did overhaul the DTH pretty thoroughly with the following changes:

  1. add OCF metadata for proper icon in new app
  2. adds device health so device doesn’t show offline
  3. add fingerprint
  4. add preset and pause support
  5. query device for states after a change instead of assuming command succeeded

I submitted a Pull Request to their github back in December, but it hasn’t been accepted yet. if you want to try out my version it’s here

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I like those blinds too! I got them to work quite well on the old Smartthings app. Unfortunately, no such experience with the new app. It keeps reporting offline, although eventually updates accurately after refreshing several times.

I was hoping your updated DTH would bring a solution to my problem, but no such luck so far.
Is yours reporting status accurately on the new App?

Yes it is. May need to exclude and re-include to get device health to properly setup.

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Eventually, it started to work without having to exclude. So, I’m all good.

Thanks for your reply and your DTH update.

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I just saw there’s an iBlinds store now.
I’m very close to admitting defeat over my current DIY blinds attempts.
iBlinds is cheaper than some on the market but mine are still cheaper…

I have one. It’s okay I guess. The firmware is not well tested and the DTH is unprofessional. But if you don’t mind some tinkering and have patience it will work for you.

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I am looking for blinds right now and have looked at iBlinds. It seem rather straight forward but the ST integration is paramount. I use WebCore a lot and TOD and seasonal programming is a must.
I feel Blinds.ca combined with iBlinds maybe be the more expensive (but reasonable) option?