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 Loweâs for $95 by ordering it in the store.
I also tested the Somfy MyLink Hub, but for $200, it didnât 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.
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Create the Somfy zRTSII Device Controller Device Type - Courtesy of @chriswood1001 (Chrisâs Device Type)
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Create the Somfy zWave Blinds Device Type - Courtesy of @Ashwin (@ashwinâs 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.
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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 âthingsâ show up (5 Blinds Channels and the controller). Below is the All Blinds channel:
- 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 @625alexâs 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:
- 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 doesnât report the status back to ST.
- 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 didnât 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.