Evidently Graber has just discovered that setups with several shades are having issues with the shades either communicating with each other or broadcasting signals to the hub. They are offering two types of power adapters for free to plug the shades into an outlet. I’ve had my shades for 1 year and replaced the stock lithium batteries with every kind of rechargeable battery made, but still have several shades that drain the batteries in 3-4 days and some that drain in 1 month. I just changed the original batteries in two shades that have lasted for 1 year. There seems to be no pattern to the shades that drain faster than others and they don’t know why. All of my shades were installed the same way at the same time, so I have no idea what’s going on. I’ve been trying to get it resolved since the first month of installation and they just emailed last week with the power supply option, which doesn’t work for me since I didn’t put an outlet in each window frame during construction. I have 43 shades and it’s happening to the same shades, with different lengths of battery life in almost half of them.
Thanks for the heads up. I installed two shades in my bedroom a few months ago and have had no problems. I recently ordered three more shades for my living room but haven’t installed them yet; I’ll have to keep an eye on battery life after they’re up and running.
We were just made aware of this last week. According to their latest recommendation, they do not advise battery power for 10 or more shades.
Interestingly, we have customers who had purchased 20 - 40 shades (including myself) with some not having battery drain issues at all. I personally use the Kirkland 1.5V alkalines from Costco and only need to change mine out every 5 - 8 months depending on use. The original lithium lasted me almost a year. So it appears the issues are not apparent for all orders.
If you have placed a large (10+ shades) order with us and are having trouble with battery power, please let me know or let our customer service know and we will find a resolution to your issue. Generally the manufacturer is able to provide power supplies at a discount, but in Richard’s case we have offered to cover the remainder of the cost.
I am also updating the FAQ’s on the original post.
Interesting to hear as that is exactly the issue I am seeing with my blinds and I was wondering if it was related to a zwave issue with some of the blinds constantly communicating but there was no pattern to it.
I have 6 blinds total and three of my blinds seem to have the issue really bad as batteries only last a month or two in them. My six blinds are paired in two groups of 3 so all three blinds always are used together and it is very evident that half the blinds die very early. I even recently bought new lithium AA’s to see if it was the batteries but again the shade only lasted 2 months. It does seem like the issue is getting worse as when I first got the blinds last year the batteries lasted a little longer but never over 6 months.
Still have no solution as I asked the manufacturer for AC adapters since no local big box seemed to be able to get the AC adapters without ordering blinds but it’s not really my preferred solution. Neal do you have AC adapters you sell separately?
If you purchased it through us just send me your order number as a private message. If you purchased from elsewhere you will have to find the SWF order number, without it we can’t sell any of the motorization power accessories.
Hi Neal…thanks I didn’t get the blinds through you as I didn’t know about you guys when I bought them. I have a support case open with SWF to see if they can get me the adapters as I dont have an SWF order number.
Hmmmm, can you PM me details of where you got it from as well as their order number and location. Let me see if I can get SWF to issue the power supplies from my end.
Discounts updated, but basic summary:
Receive 15% off with coupon: SmartThings + receive an auto applied 12% volume discount on the site for purchases over $500 (on Graber products) + receive $20 off for each motorized blind or shade you have in your shopping cart. Basically approx 27% off on the z-wave shades + $20 off per motorized Graber product.
As a general update, since Canadian customers were given 21% yesterday, I’ve been allowed to increase the discount to 21% this week.
So currently you will receive $20 off per motorized shade + 12% off (if subtotal is greater than $500) and 21% off with the coupon: SmartThings
One note, each discount tier is deducted from the previously discounted amount.
Got my order of 4 blinds last week and installed them yesterday. Got them all working, had a bit of trouble with one because it turns out the set of batteries it came with were already dead. Replaced with some amazon basics alkaline and it’s working like a champ. Now that I’m happy with these I want to order one more for my bathroom.
I have three motorized shades using 32 batteries combined. The batteries are dying every month and I only cycle the shades about 5 times a week. Is anyone else having this problem?
Hey Adam,
If they were ordered from us can you email support@zebrablinds.com with the order number? They should be able to help resolve it.
I ordered them from Lowe’s. I contacted customer support that bali directed me to and told them I had them set up to smartthings. Their response was that the blinds will wake up to other signals in my smart home network and that is why the batteries are dying so quickly. I’m not sure how true this is.
I’ll send you a pm in a bit, on what you can do.
Direct messages are restricted for brand new forum users, FYI.
Figured that was the problem. Thanks Mark.
pmed (10 char)
I just received my order of 6 z-wave grabber roller shades directly from the ZebraBlinds website and they look great and are perfectly sized and are connected to the DC power supply I ordered with the shades… but for some reason through, 4 of the shades work flawlessly with both Smartthings and the remote a s a secondary (am attempting to use 2 remotes, 1 with the top 3, 1 with the bottom 3), but with 2 of the larger shades:
One works perfectly with smartthings, but only works temporarily with the remote. So when I add a remote as a secondary, it operates the 3 top shades the first time as it should, but after that, this shade stops responding to the remote and the other 2 continue to work perfectly. I have tried every reset option available. I can use smartthings /alexa etc to operate all three top shades, just not the remote as a secondary on the middle one.
The second one won’t pair with smartthings at all, but did pair with one of the remotes directly. I have tried every reset option listed in the manuals both network and full. I am not sure if there are any hidden resets or firmware I can try since it looks like the radio itself functions. And it did ‘look’ to pair with smartthings once, but wouldn’t operate. after a reset it wouldn’t connect at all.
I hope it is something that can just be fixed, I really don’t want to send it back, since they were a pain to install.
Hmmmm, how exactly did you reset it?
For the one that won’t connect at all, held down the pair button until the blinking light turned red and the shade jogged. This should have been all that was needed to clear the network (also how I unpaired the other 5 shades from their remotes). It paired once paired once briefly, but wouldn’t operate. From then on it would not pair.
I checked from the smartthings dev interface to make sure it was clean, then did the full reset by holding the pair button on the blind until the light turned red and started blinking rapidly. This of course, reset the limits, so I paired a single remote directly and reset upper/lower limit and also raised and lowered a few times,
I then did a network reset (holding until it went red and jogged, but I never could get the blind to pair with Smartthings again.
There is no telling if this is something I screwed up myself or not. The other 5 paired to Smartthings quite easily. Only thing I can think of, is if there is something on the smartthings side that isn’t cleared out completely or I screwed something up on the device side.
Of the 6 remotes, all but 2 came with dead 2430 batteries, I am only using two, but will replace those batteries anyway