Z-Wave + integrated blinds/shades: Custom Graber Virtual Cord Shades

@ZebraBlinds Thanks a lot for your videos and all the information. One last thing…It will be great if you can also provide some pictures/video of the blind installation ?

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I’ll be putting up a blog post later with out of the box pictures and showing installation steps. I’ll also make a small video this weekend showing the installed brackets and steps. Taking the shade out of the box, installing and connecting to smartthings shouldn’t take more than 5 mins at most. Everything is plug and play.

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Thanks for the detail intro for the product. One question - is the motor reusable in a sense that if I move to a different house and the window dimension changed, can I salvage the motor and just order new shades?

Technically speaking you can salvage the motor and move it to another shade by purchasing a regular cellular shade. However, it won’t be possible just to insert it into another shade. You would have to retrofit it and installing the button on the headrail will be a hassle. The shades are meant to be custom ordered for a particular window, anything further than that, we can only guide you on how you could go about moving the motor.

Im curious, what Somfy motor is it using? Is the zwave control from somfy as well?

The motor and Z-wave control is one unit. So if you open up the shade, all you will find is the motor. The motor with z-wave is designed and patented by Graber (the manufacturer and a direct competitor with Hunter Douglas), and the motor is manufactured and warrantied by Somfy. As far as I am aware Graber isn’t currently allowing the motors to be sold separately, so specs on the motor itself haven’t been made available.

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I like this and am curious if there are any plans to bring this technology to blinds?

Currently in the works. No ETA that can be announced.

Awesome. Thanks.

million dollar question…will we get a smart app for these guys? (present quarter open, half open, etc) :slight_smile:

One can definitely be made (and is something we are considering, just haven’t finalized its functions yet). Not sure if there is anything similar for dimmer switches currently but since it works just like a dimmer switch (and is recognized as one), it can pretty much work with any smart app that can control it like Smart Lighting, CoRE, and others.

As requested, a quick video I took this morning explaining the installation of the shades and some other info especially for you guys. It’s on my personal youtube channel since I am actually in the video. Say hi :grin:

Updated in original post as well.

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Thanks for the video Neal. I am in the process of getting my blinds and your products look very interesting. Can you manually control the blind if ST is down with the remote or hand?

So you can manually operate the shades if the remote is added (like I showed in the inclusion video) as long as the ST hub is still turned on and its Z-wave network is functioning. The remote uses Z-wave as well so when we add the shade to the hub, we also add the remote to the hub so the remote is on the same network. If the hub itself is completely down you can simply repair the remote directly to the shade, or use buttons on the headrail to control it. So essentially the order of control goes like this:

  1. ST & Included remote & Headrail Button
  2. If ST Cloud is down: Included Remote & Headrail Button
    EDIT: 3) If ST hub won’t turn on: Included Remote (as long as your Z-wave mesh network is still running) & Headrail button. So when pairing the remote to the shade after adding it to smartthings, just make sure the remote is as close to the shade as possible. This way the remote directly sends its commands to the shade vs relying on a close-by repeater.

Does that make sense?

EDIT: The reason I mentioned IF ST cloud is down specifically is when the ST cloud is actually down the commands you send through the app won’t reach the hub, however, anything you preset through SmartLighting should work since it’s technically supposed to run locally.

Thanks for sharing the video Neal. A quick question about the brackets - can the brackets be mounted on the top or sides of the window frame? Especially for windows that are recessed within a frame? Because the windows we have here , we cannot place the brackets like you have shown.

See this pic as an example install -->

So it depends on the product itself. The one I showed you can be mounted to the top or to the back. The roller shades can be mounted to the top, back or side. All brackets will have a minimum of to the top or to the back.

My shades were manufactured in an outside mount configuration (mounted outside the window frame) since my frame has only a 1/4" of depth. Instructions on how to measure for inside or outside mounts are available on each product page. Also, if you have specific questions feel free to ask.

Chances of this happening is low and mostly for my wife but does that mean pairing the remote to shade means only one shade or multiple? I am looking at 8 shades and a couple of them are really high up. So the headrail button could be a problem unless I can do some mod.

@ZebraBlinds in case of multiple shades, will each shade have its own remote? Will the shade pair with its respective remote? Or will one temote , when added controls all the shades?

Ok, I made a minor error earlier. Even if the smartthings hub is down, as long as your Z-wave mesh is running the remotes will work. Sorry about the misinformation… was a bit tired from staying up all night working. The post will be edited. Also, I’ll post a video showing the shade working with the remote while my hub is on, and while its turned off.

EDIT: So when pairing the remote to the shade after adding the shade to smartthings, just make sure the remote is as close to the shade as possible. This way the remote directly sends its commands to the shade vs relying on a close-by repeater.

Regarding the remote included with each shade, each remote can only control one shade. There is a separate remote (about $40) available that can control multiple shades in a group.

So each shade comes with a single remote. These are the virtual cord remotes and they can only be paired with one shade at a time, although you can pair multiple remotes to one shade. To control multiple shades with a single remote there is an additional remote (around $40) available which can control a group of shades.