I wonder if the AXIS project is still alive. They indicated in a blog post on their website that shipping of the first batch will begin 17 April. More than a month later and not a word regarding shipping.
If I understand the search function correctly, the last time they (@Team_AXIS) were active on this site, was during September of last year.
Many of the kickstarter retrofit blinds products simply donāt understand the safety requirements for motorized blinds. These can literally kill a child or pet who gets caught in them, so the safety issues are huge. Typically the closer they get to production the more they find out that their cheap and simple design isnāt going to be able to be sold, or at least not UL listed ( which means it canāt be sold at big box stores like Home Depot). Then they have to decide whether they are going to add all the required safety features, or just give up.
It seems that they are alive, but not much on the smarthings forums.
If you take a look at their posting in facebook/other social media, you will see them
But i doubt they released it yet. i have seen some video on youtube but nothing in regards of the zwave version one
sorry to revivew old post - but good point JD Roberts. so important to think about choke hazards! how easy it is to open the box or unit etc
Im curious if anyone has these ? i still havent pre ordered but am getting tempted tho team axis has gone quietā¦
The ZigBee version has been delayed again. Based on their last communication, the shipment will only start in January 2018, although the bluetooth version had its first batch shipped sometime in April or May.
I ordered 3, but donāt even receive email updates anymore from them.
I pre-ordered zigbee axis gear for my whole house and just received shipment 1 of 2ā¦ after some trial and error, I got it working, and it looks like itās going to be a good solution to not re-fitting the whole house with expensive new blinds. The only thing I havenāt been able to get work yet is the integration with smartthings hub; if anyone else has figured out that part, Iād be interested in how you got it to work. I can get the gear into smart home mode, but smartthings canāt find any gear devices.
Great to hear that finally someone received this gear. I thought it will never make it.
Can you pair them with SmartThings? Do share some photos with us on yr work 
I havenāt yet. I emailed axis support after this and they got right back to me with a new manual that shows how to integrate with smartthings. Once I try it, Iāll post again, but the devices work well using just the Bluetooth based app so far; blinds go up every morning and down every night on a schedule thru their app, and I havenāt had any issues yet.
Any updates to share now hopefully all paired up @Jon_Treadway?
Have some ordered but only due to receive next year :-/ hopefully they are worth the wait!
I had 10 of the Zigbee-capable Axis controllers delivered this week. Iāve now installed 8, although the first 3 are in various states of not quite being installed due to various issues (lack of depth in the window, chain too long etc, etc). Theyāre not difficult to install, but the āfits all blindsā might be a bit of a stretch.
Anyway, Iām now focussing on my office, whereās thereās 4 blinds, and Axis is installed correctly. Each time to add a new unit, the app asks (almost encourages) you to convert the blind to Smartapp control. Iāve just tried this with one of the blinds.
In ST, it eventually identifies itself as āThingā. (helpful). I can add it, but beyond that, thereās zero clues how to gain control via ST; thereās nothing on the Axis support pages. Iāve opened a ticket, will report back. THe only way to roll back to local app control (via Bluetooth Le) is to factory reset the Axis, and go through all the set-up phase again. Not difficult, but tedious.
Same thing here. Please keep up posted @pwhite8314
I posted this on another thread, but will re-post here. pwhite8314 sounds like heās in the same position as I am, except that the AXIS device handler in my SmartThings app allows me full control over the blinds, and also displays battery %ā¦ I think weāre all kind of feeling out issues on a new product still. I still have generally positive feelings about my AXIS Gear purchase (good thing, since Iāve got more coming that I ordered in round 2).
I have only integrated 1 AXIS Gear to SmartThings so far (I pre-ordered 8 Zigbee chipped devices in round 1). There is some trial and error involved; this isnāt a plug-and-play experience like a lot of more mature SmartThings integrated products. Some comments Iād have about the whole AXIS Gear experience so far that donāt seem to show up elsewhere:
(1) I installed all 8 of my Gears onto walls first. That part was pretty easy, but you have to make sure the cord is really tight when you screw in the plate that the Gear hangs on; I did not pull it tight enough on the first couple, and had to re-position screws later.
(2) I tried integrating the Gears into SmartThings after I had installed them on the walls; I was expecting a pretty easy integration based on my previous experience with ~100 or so other things in my condo. That wasnāt the caseā¦ I only had 1 email to the AXIS team, and they sent me an 18 page PDF called SmartThings Integration Tutorial v5.0r that walks you through 33 steps to add the Gears to SmartThings using GitHub and their own device handler. That sounds cumbersome, and it did take me (definitely not an expert user) a couple hours or so to add the 1 Gear onto SmartThings that Iāve added so far, but it wasnāt painful - my lack of experience is why it took as long as it did. I did not have to delete my location or any of the other things I have in SmartThings, as some people are saying they were told to do.
(3) Another problem with my install was that the windows where the Gears are located are about as far away from my hub as you can get in my condo. Itās not farā¦ only a single floor 2 bedroom condoā¦ and I have lots of other Z-Wave and Zigbee devices between the windows and the hub, but it apparently was too far. So for the 1 Gear that Iāve put on SmartThings so far, I had to take it off the window/wall, and go sit with it next to the hub to get it to pair.
(4) Be careful with where you place the solar panel. My 8 were all placed on windows facing south and east, and I live in the Caribbean, so plenty of sunlight. Except I put them at the top of the windows, behind the blinds, and didnāt account for an overhang outside that blocked so much light that the Gears on the upper windows wouldnāt function after only a few days of use. Those 4 panels will have to be moved, which stinks for me, since I did all the cord management on them already.
(5) Add-on to (4), The 12 (yes 12) AA back-up batteries in each solar panel seem to run out quickly. Iāve had my Gears for about a month now, using them not terribly often, but all of my upper window Gears are dead at this point. Again, Iām going to have to take them down and move the panels to hopefully build up some stored energy, but the back-up batteries seem to have gone out in the meantime.
Some of my mistakes are probably obviously dumb ones borne of being excited to get the Gears up on the wall after waiting through the Kickstarter campaign, but hopefully this is helpful to someone. Definitely ask for that specific PDF if you donāt have it; the support guy I dealt with was named Matt and was great, just like all the people working at AXIS, which Iāve found to be the best part of their product.
That seems excessive for pairing a zigbee device with a custom DTH, doesnāt it?
Can you share the PDF? Iād like to look through it before my Axis devices arrive. Thanks.
There are big pictures 
Itās not hard, and the steps are all micro actions; it was actually not bad at all once I got a feel for what I was doing.
One other update to share, re: how much control you have inside SmartThings vs. the AXIS app - I emailed support last night to clarify this, but havenāt heard back so far. SmartThings sees your AXIS Gear as a switch, so if you run a routine, the blinds will either be totally open or totally shut; in a perfect world, I think they would have set it up the way dimmers are set up in SmartThings, so that you could choose varying levels of open/shut; maybe in the future that will happen, but itās not a huge deal for what I want to accomplish (i.e., blinds open at sunrise, close at sunset). Mine also seemed to go into SmartThings upside down, or maybe itās just the way the graphic is supposed to look, but at fully open, the status bar says 0%, vs. 100% at fully closed. I donāt think itās an issue with the blinds direction; SmartThings sees them as open when they are open and closed when they are closed, but itās a bit of an odd presentation.
Will try to post a video this weekend maybe.
Here is the link for integration
@Jon_Treadway and @aeabalos Thanks for all the information.
Iām late replying, but wanted to elaborate on my experience with Axis Gear.
In summary: Avoid.
In Depth:
Just not ready for prime-time. Not even close. This is despite the CEO assuring me theyād ship before Xmas. 2016. One year late, and the software (app) and firmware (device) are still very, very poor. Jury is out on the hardware, but the solar panel is cumbersome.
Iāve not even tries to pair them to ST, I took one look at the directions and decided it was a waste of time until I decide Iām keeping them (Iāve got 10). Main issues:
The (IOS) app is buggy as hell. They applied a āhotfixā that resolved an update issue, but now Iām unable to configure any of my blinds, as the app gets stuck when trying to set the high point.
The app has an entire tab just for Grouping the blinds, however the knowledge-base say itās not going to work until the Bluetooth SIG delivers mesh capability. Good luck with that.
The recommendation to workaround the lack of grouping is to implement schedules. Thatās a great idea, except all 8 of my blinds are no longer following the schedule.
As Jon said, these things are power hungry. Iām in Texas, so not lacking in the sun dept, but on two of my north-facing windows, thereās insufficient power to complete a full up-down cycle each day. The fix would be to mount the panel somewhere other than the top of the window, however that makes it very visible from both inside and out
The firmware update process it patchy. Iāve managed to get one updated, the other I tried is borked, and wonāt even factory reset
Iāll stop here for now. The hardware itself is OK, but you do have to stab away at it to wake it up (touch sensitive, so thereās no feedback until a light comes on). The two I have positioned outside of the window opening struggle to open the blind without skipping.
I have a lot of IoT stuff, some great, some good, some hopeless. Axis currently falls into the latter category, aggravated by the fact that I was daft enough to installed 8 of the 10 that I bought, so now thereās a bunch of patching up to do if I remove them, which is looking very likely.