My Somfy-SmartThings Integration

There is a long thread about how to integrate Somfy Motorized Blinds (Somfy Thread) with Smartthings but I wanted to provide a step by step guide on how I did it. This was a 6 month project in the making between research, pricing out different installers and getting it done. The Somfy Motors, installation costs and zWave Module cost me $1800 total). What made this more complicated was these blinds were purchased from Home Depot 2 years ago and are designed by Hunter Douglas, but are not manufactured by them. The below steps are all AFTER you have motorized your blinds, purchased the zRTSII contoller (Somfy zRTSII) and have programmed your TELIS remote control. You can try and get this part from Lowe’s for $95 by ordering it in the store.

I also tested the Somfy MyLink Hub, but for $200, it didn’t provide any more value than the ST integration other than a pretty GUI.

I recommend you hire a professional to install the motors unless you really know what your doing with these.

  1. Create the Somfy zRTSII Device Controller Device Type - Courtesy of @chriswood1001 (Chris’s Device Type)

  2. Create the Somfy zWave Blinds Device Type - Courtesy of @Ashwin (@ashwin’s code) . I modified this code to my liking by customizing the tile button icons and titles, as well as I had to flip flop the open/close statuses. There are a few device types floating around in the original thread, and the one that works best might vary, so try them all out.

  3. Plug in the zWave RTSII Module into an outlet and follow the instructions to program your zWave Controller and blinds to your Smartthings controller (Manual). For the channels (Virtual Node), in the ST app, you do Connect New Device, and then on the zWave RTS Controller, you add your virtual nodes. I had 5 virtual nodes, 4 blinds plus the "All Blinds: channel, They correspond to how my Telis remote is programmed. In my case, I now have 6 “things” show up (5 Blinds Channels and the controller). Below is the All Blinds channel:

  1. Now that your blinds are fully controllable in SmartThings, the possibilities are endless. In my case:

a) I setup 3 Hello Home actions, which are pictured in the video below:

Tilt Blinds Closed, (This is what was programmed to the My button on my Telis Remote) - Set to turn the All Blinds Switch On and Dim at 50%
Tilt Blinds Open Or Bring them Down (if they are raised up) - Set to turn the All Blinds Switch On and Dim at 20%
Raise Blinds Up - Set to turn the All Blinds Switch on and Dim at 100%

b) I then setup 3 virtual switches (using the built in SmartThings Momentary On/Off switches) and published 3 smart apps (Big Switch for Hello Home Phrases) which program the Virtual Switches to the Hello Home action. The virtual switches allow me to easily press a button in the ST app to initiate the 3 actions I mostly use and utilize them easily in @625alex’s Action Dashboard:

c) I setup my Hello home phrases to Open/Close blinds at sleep time, sunrise, when kids are napping, etc. It works out well.

As mentioned in the original Somfy thread, the drawbacks of using SmartThings with Somfy are:

  1. If you change the blinds with the physical Telis remote, ST will not know about the status. This is a limitation with how the zWave controller works and it doesn’t report the status back to ST.
  2. If you have multiple channels like me and use the All Blinds channel to open/close the blinds, the other Blind channels still will not update their status. You can get around this by using the other channels and not using the All Blinds channel, but I didn’t want to send 4 different commands to the controller as it could collide with each other.

If anyone needs help or has questions, feel free to ask! Thanks to @chriswood1001 for selling me the zWave RTS controller for $90 and @Ashwin with helping me with my device code.

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As far as step 1 goes, I haven’t noticed a functional difference between the generic Z-Wave Controller device type (which SmartThings uses by default) and @chriswood1001’s device type. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like that step can be skipped.

You could be right about that one. I never examined the code, I thought Chris made some enhancements and just went with his. Thanks for pointing this out.

I just checked. He made two changes, but neither one makes a functional difference:
The generic device type has pointless On/Off tiles, so he got rid of those.
When you add a ZRTSI, the generic device type names it “Z-Wave Controller” and his names it “Somfy ZRTSI Controller.”

Other than that, the code is identical.

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That’s probably ok because if we end up needing to add or change a few things to the device type, we are on one that can pick up modifications. Plus it’s clear in the list what’s what in this case.

I have it all working as well now. Thanks for your help setting this up. I do look forward to Somfy complete integration so that I can identify the tiles easier

Will someone please help with setup with the ZRTSI 2 (the one with the display). I plug in the ZRTSI and go in to base include mode. In the smartthings app i click the “+” button and add “Connect new device” - It finds the controller and I assume I am connected, however on the ZRTSI 2 it states base include fail. I cannot add virtual nodes if it cannot find a base node
 what am i doing wrong?

@Mbhforum, I am getting quotes for blinds but am a little unclear about what I need. Do I need multiple controllers for 7 blinds? And do I even need to order the remote, or do I just need the Z-wave controller?

Thanks,
JD

I have just 1 motorized shade, I have the ZRTSII set up, the base node is included successfully, and I’ve added it to the ST app as a zwave controller. However, I have the default on/off tiles, but when i select the tiles, nothing happens. I don’t think I have to add the different channels because the base node operates on channel 1. Any ideas?

Thanks for everyone’s help

One ZWave RTSII Is sufficient as it has 16 channels. You do need a remote to do the initial programming before you even link the ZRTSII but after that, you won’t need the remote unless for backup purposes. I used mine once to see if the issue I was having was with ST or the blinds. Make sure you get a 16 channel remote also, otherwise you can get the 5 channel remote, but then you will only have 4 channels to program the 7 blinds, so each channel would have to control 2 blinds and the last channel would control all. Wasn’t a big deal to me, so I got the 5 channel remote, even though I have 5 blinds, so one of channels is programmed for 2 blinds. Not a big deal to me since I use the all channel all the time.

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nevermind, figured out that even 1 RTS motor needs to be associated to a virtual node channel. I thought the base node was operating as channel 1. my bad. all good now.

I have 11 shades, soon to be 12, now working with SmartThings and the ZRTSI II. I also have a 5 button wall mounted control (Somfy Decoflex WireFree RTS) that I used to program 5 virtual nodes on the ZRTSI II. Since my installer setup my shades in zones using the Decoflex (the fifth zone being “All Shades”), this seemed like enough individual control for my setup. As of right now, I have no need to control shades individually; 95% of the time I want them all up, or all down.

If you are looking for current ZRTSI II programming instructions, I found them on Somfy’s website and here.

I used the standard z-wave control device type, and @Ash’s device type referenced above. I also am using the official Echo integration for control via Alexa. The controls are a bit backwards. “Turn on shades” causes them to go up, and “turn off shades” causes them to go down. To get around this, I created a group in Echo called “windows.” Now when I say, “Alexa, turn on the windows,” the shades raise. Still not perfect, but it is at least a little more logical and (for now at least) has achieved decent WAF. If anyone has any other suggestions, I’d love to hear them!

SmartThings requires ON and OFF controls, so my logic was to treat the window like a light bulb — when the window is “ON” there’s light, and when the window is “OFF” there’s no light. If that seems backwards to you, I can easily flip it around in the device type.

Totally understand your logic there! Hope I did not come off as too critical. I think it is just a difference of referring to the window or the shades. It is working well with “turn windows on” and “turn windows off” via Echo. From what I can tell, Echo does not yet have the ability to respond to “raise” and “lower” in the native ST integration.

What I do (as you can see above is) use virtual switches with routines such as “Lift blinds”, “close blinds” and “open blinds”. I rarely use the actual device to control them and do it mostly through my apple watch, widgets on my phone or Alexa :slight_smile:

I will have shades upstairs and downstairs, will I need two ZRTSI’s?

Also, I am finding ZRTSI not ZRTSII, what is the difference?

Thanks,

JD

Very new to SmartThings, but have my ZRSTI controller setup and working with my hub. I’m not having any luck finding the answer to one specific question that I have, would appreciate some more insight. Basically, the switch function is “on/off”, there is the “My” button that exists on the remote (and works in the code as the “Stop” button). For my cellular shades, we have the “My” button programmed to open/close the blinds half-way up and use this at certain times of the day, for certain windows. I would like to be able to use this “My” button (stop in the code) as part of a routine. For example we have three motorized blinds that face East so in the morning we want them to open only half-way. Cannot seem to figure out how to create the custom routine that would allow me to use the “My” button (again, the “stop” button in the code).

Any advice on how to accomplish this? I’ve got everything else working, but struggling with how to get this piece working. Thanks!

I think this will depend on your home, and placement of the ZRSTI controller. For my house (which is 3854 sq. ft), I’m able to get one ZRSTI II to control 12 windows, 4 upstairs and 8 downstairs (all of my motorized windows). Granted we have a living room that is open to the 2nd story loft, and the layout of the house works well for this one device.

I’m fairly new to this whole space, so others may have more details to offer, but if you can centrally locate the ZRSTI you might have the same luck.

I believe the II is just the “newer” model and what I got when we purchased our blinds (about a month or so ago). Hope this helps!

If you’re using my beta device type, you could have your routine “dim” the shades around 50%. DOWN is below 25%, MY is 25% to 75%, and UP is above 75%.

Just keep in mind that your ON/OFF toggle may not behave as an UP/DOWN switch anymore. Depending on the level, it could be UP/DOWN, MY/DOWN, or DOWN/DOWN. ← My updated device type should fix this bug.

Thanks Ash, but I should have been more specific in my question. We have the cellular shades (http://www.baliblinds.com/Style.do?command=&productLineId=59) so there is no “dim” option here. It’s basically Up / Down or the “My” button on the standard remote - which for our blinds raises them up halfway. So in essence, I have three buttons and I want the routine to leverage the “My” button to just raise the shades half-way in the early morning and then again raise them all the way up in the later morning. I’ve been busy but doing a little research on the side, and the virtual button with a Smart App approach was recommended elsewhere so I’m going to check that out, but I’m still not sure how this all ties together yet. I guess I expected this to be a bit easier, but looks like there is some work required
Appreciate the reply!

I’ll post back once I get this all figured out on my end.