[OBSOLETE] Absolute Simplest ESP8266 Smart Blinds, no mqtt, rest, bridge, or broker, just your board and your hub

Really well done then. Now I’m really excited to seeing that code. I’ve been trying to do that with the ESP8266 unsuccessfully for quite a while.

It’s pretty brute-force basic. is there a guide for posting a “release” or should I just go for it?

I haven’t seen a guide. I known that you can actually post you code right here in a post.

Feel free to create a new post, a general guide, pictures, video, schematics and code samples are always appreciated :grin:

Holy cow @jetpuf this is exactly the direction I was trying to go with my code in the beginning but just couldn’t crack it lol, I don’t care how rough you think it looks I would Looooove to see the code behind it along with the hardware details!!!

But yea if you go ahead and make a new release thread, could you please post a link back here afterwards to make sure we all find it and/or get notified of it? Or if you don’t make a new thread, perhaps just some brief details and a github link here?

Either way, my hats off to you sir, well done!!!

Here it is! Please let me know how I can make this first post better. heh.

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I would like to see our code.

Has anyone run into the problem the power bank (USB battery) auto shut off after few seconds because too little power was consumed? I got a similar power bank with solar panel at one side, but it keeps shutting off. I am using nodemcu v0.9 BTW.

That’s an issue with the power bank it seems. Also, not sure if that solar charging will keep up with the ESP 8266. It’s not a very efficient chip.

@blebson, it’s by design the power bank, at least for most of them, shuts itself off when too little or no current was drawn. So when it done charging the tablet/phone, it turns itself off as the phone/table draw little current from the power bank when it is fully charged. I just don’t know if anyone in this thread has ran into this issue using the power bank posted? Would be nice if there are some power banks just don’t have this auto shut off feature.

I understand it’s by design for the power bank, I just meant you’d either need to disable that feature or get a different one.

@C_Hobbs probably need a solar panel like this

https://www.mysmartblinds.com/buy/product/solar-panel.php

C_Hobbs,

Thanks for posting! The code works great.

Can anyone tell me how to edit this sketch to control additional servos?

My goal is to control 4 servos with one ESP8266.

Thanks,

Johnny

Has anyone found a battery pack/solar panel combination that lasts a good amount of time? Reading through this thread, the best I’ve seen anyone claim is 48 hours. I’m considering jumping into this… All of my windows are west facing and we get full sun most of the day. I need a solar panel that is big enough to power the ESP8266/servo continuously, yet small enough that my wife approves :slight_smile:

I’m currently putting together a system that will get about a year+ of battery life from a 2000mAh battery (without any movement) and has solar recharging. In my testing so far it only takes a few hours of direct sunlight to fully charge the battery after a week or so of use (and a week of cloudy days). My system is a bit more complicated though, the blinds are all RF controlled and communicate with a base-station which is a WeMos D1 Mini with a RF shield on it. Once I have everything working the way I want I’ll put together a post.

Thanks! I’ll be interested to see more. Which solar panel are you planning to use if you don’t mind me asking?

I’m currently using 3 250mA 5v panels strung together in my own 3D printed case. It’s a bit overkill so I’m probably going to drop it down to 1 or 2 panels per shade.

I’m interested to see what you are putting together. My wife would love for me to remove the cords from the windows… although she does like the automatic blinds :smiley:

Thanks for this code! I struggled to get the WiFi to come up and get an IP from my DHCP server so I used the example code for WiFiMulti and the WiFiMulti module from the Arduino IDE and it works great. I used cheap blinds from Home Depot and they come in a variety of sizes. I created an adapter that you can print for these here http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2320388.

I am powering the servo directly from the board using the GND and Vin pins, no need to split the USB cable.

I have been trying to get the power draw down for the NodeMCU so that I can run it off the 5000mAh battery mentioned in this thread but have not had much luck. I can get at most 3 or 4 days. I have removed the power to the USB UART. Still no luck.

More info and pics of this project here http://blog.assome.com/2017/05/automated-blinds-with-smartthings-and.html

How to cut the power to the USB UART and some other ideas to reduce power consumption from Malcolm Yeoman in his blog post here https://tinker.yeoman.com.au/2016/05/29/running-nodemcu-on-a-battery-esp8266-low-power-consumption-revisited/