IKEA smart blinds and repeaters

Now that IKEA is shipping again, I ordered 4 more of their smart blinds for the living room. Received them last week. Pairing was easy because I had done it before.

Once everything was up and running, I wondered if each blind HAD to use the repeater included with the blind.

These take a bit of room and all 4 monopolize my 6 outlet wall mounted surge protector.

That involved removing the blinds from the app, repairing them and only using one repeater All 4 blinds paired just as easily with dedicated repeaters or sharing a repeater with 3 other blinds. SmartThings controlled them fine.

The only caveat is the battery reports 0% for 3 of the 4 blinds. The only blind reporting correctly is the first one I paired.

My assumption is the purpose of the repeater is to report battery level and nothing else.

The purpose of the repeater is just what it says: to act as a Zigbee repeater for the blinds, Which because of positioning sometimes have difficulty with range.

There are some community members who have gotten only the repeaters and it’s worked fine as a repeater. And it’s certified as a range extender.

Are you sure the other devices are using that repeater? You should be able to see the routing in the IDE.

I’ve got 3 blinds. One installed initially and was reporting battery before I reset the repeater and added it to smartthings. The second two blinds were just paired and I’ve not even plugged in their repeaters and they show battery correctly too. You are using the default DTH ? Not a custom one ?

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@JDRoberts

In the IDE every blind in the living room shows the hub is the next hop.

@Tim_Jones

I am using a custom DH for the blind as well as a custom DH for the included remote from Luis Pinto.

Is there another DH? I don’t see a stock shade DH in the list. Just IKEA button and IKEA motion sensor.

The way it is now, one remote handles all 4 blinds in the living room.

If it’s been 24 hours since you added the repeaters to the network, then that means the battery reports are not going through the repeater at all. The issue would appear to be with the DTH being used for the blinds.

New app - add device - IKEA - window treatment worked for me

Ah. I rarely use the new app. Old habits …

Will the included remote work also?

Yes, I added all the remotes. Reset them first (I think it was hold for 5s) then press once to discover them, new app -> Ikea -> Ikea button. Once discovered you can assign an automation to them (eg open/close blinds but you could have open blinds, turn off lights and vice versa)

I also reset the repeater (need a phone SIM removal tool to get to the reset button) and added it into ST. (Question for @JDRoberts - will a repeater only work once it’s added to the mesh ? or will it repeat any signal it happens to receive ?)

@Tim_Jones I don’t see a battery report in the new app.

I know enough about this to be dangerous. Nothing changed in the IDE for the device handler.

DId you remove and re-add them ? the new app would still be using that custom DTH ?

It can only repeat messages on a network that it is joined to. It would ignore all the others, for one thing, it wouldn’t have permission to either receive or transmit them.

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All is well now. Thanks for the help!

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