I just want to share that these are by far the best home automation you can have. I love my smart lights, hacked together smart humidifier, smart fans (the vornado dc fans with outlet switches), intake air pump, and air quality monitoring.
But nothing has the quality of life impact of smart blinds. It’s the best, and probably only, way to reliably keep your sleep schedule in sync. Smart lightbulbs - four of the brightest you can buy - are nothing compared to a window on a cloudy day.
seanalltogether · 4h ago
Automated blinds can also have a good effect on temperature control. In the summer you can have your south facing blinds automatically close when you leave the house to block out the sun.
Spivak · 2h ago
So that's a funny thing, your blinds are on the inside of your house so the sun energy is hitting them and dissipating from there. Hopefully your blinds are white and reflecting more of it out than the other surfaces it would otherwise hit. But if you want to make a real temperature difference you need blinds on the other side of the insulated box otherwise known as an awning.
blacksmith_tb · 1h ago
The only tricky part being that it's desirable to limit the amount of sun shining into the house in the warmer months, but not the cooler ones. Awnings that fold or are otherwise removable are a reasonable solution, there are also sunshades which mount outside, and also use a spinning rod to raise and lower (if the electronics and motor here could be weatherproofed a little they might be quite usable).
asdefghyk · 1h ago
Having the blind close to the window and covering at least a extra 6 inches or 15 cm band around edge of window significantly reduces light spillage into the room, when the blind is down, in my experience.
foobarian · 2h ago
The blinds shown under this article are pretty ordinary vinyl type blinds that leak a ton of light. I wish I could find blinds thick enough to behave like cardboard over windows, that could also be opened on a daily cadence.
At this point I gave up on blinds and put a shirt over my eyes to sleep. I thought about just covering the windows permanently but I don't relish that idea.
ojame · 1h ago
Not sure what country you're from, but "blockout blinds" are likely what you're looking for. They blockout (essentially) all light and are operated like normal blinds.
danielheath · 1h ago
Have never seen blockout blinds which stop enough light during the day - they leak enough to be comparable to a reading lamp, since outdoors is so bright.
sokka_h2otribe · 52m ago
Mounted internal to the window frame, not external, works better for me. Internal can ride tighter to the window, so light can't go out the edges. With external frame mounting, you need much wider shades.
If the fabric itself isn't blocking light... You need better material. I have only ever had problem with light leakage in the edges, not in the fabric material.
I believe 'blackout thermal shades' is what to look for.
danielheath · 1h ago
You can get very nice sleep masks (padded, shaped to your head, etc) for under $30 online (or much less pleasant ones for a few dollars).
zymhan · 1h ago
Curtains.
threatofrain · 4h ago
Could we hear more about your home automation stack? I'm looking to get into this myself.
joshvm · 4h ago
Can't speak for OP, but just get Home Assistant running and play around. It'll work in Docker in anything, but it's a good use for an old Raspberry Pi. There isn't much more of a stack than that, and HA is by far the most polished OSS solution.
It's got some sharp edges - every time I've done a major auto-update it's broken something critical. You can run it alongside other controllers like the Hue Bridge, which is nice to have as a backup (since 90% of what most people connect is smart lighting). Probably the most useful simple automation I have is an motion activated dim light in the bathroom at night, but that's using Hue.
Then look at ESPHome, which is an ecosystem for making your own DIY sensors and controllers that can feed into HA. For example we have a Sensirion air quality sensor that triggers a smart switch connected to a fan if the particulate level gets high when cooking. You can go a very long way with on/off to control non-smart devices, and your sensors don't need to be particularly accurate (like absolute PM2.5) as long as the conditon you trigger on is repeatable.
The only thing to think about is what hardware ecosystem makes sense for you. For example there's at least four different competing standards for connectivity (WiFi, Zigbee, Z-Wave, Matter/Thread, etc). So getting a Zigbee dongle isn't a bad idea because then you can connect any IKEA or Hue device (among others).
asdefghyk · 1h ago
RE ".....if the particulate level gets high when cooking ....." What is the particale counter level you use ? The number ? Just curious.
Larrikin · 2h ago
Home Assistant is nice for this crowd in that you can actually use a real programming language to do the automations. I went with PyScript but NodeRed is very popular as well. No need for YAML
J_Shelby_J · 2h ago
Same. I use the hue automations to handle the lights. HA is for everything else.
The hue motion sensors pay for themselves pretty quickly.
J_Shelby_J · 2h ago
The home assistant $100 stand alone device. Pretty seamless user experience. On par with what you would expect for a consumer device as far as UX. Maybe could be a bit more polished but you can do pretty much anything with it as far extending the ecosystem. My only complaint is that writing automations in untyped yaml sucks. Fortunately, if you dump the docs in an LLM it can one shot most things - if you’re trying to do something the gui automation tool doesn’t support.
The rest is zigbee and zwave switches and sensors. You can get cheap ones from ikea. You can get nicer ones from Zooz. I like Apollo for air quality sensors. The humidifier is the German brand Ventura. Zero maintenance. But it’s not smart so I got a power outlet that reports power usage. When it runs out of water the humidifier shuts off and the power goes to zero, so I have an automation that detects that and sends a message via the HA app.
Living in California and having fans move air around from cool rooms to warmer rooms has cut our AC bill significantly as a dc fan is a fraction of power consumption of a whole house AC. And also co2 levels stay much lower. Last week I set up my window fan to blow air in whenever it’s cooler outside then inside.
3d printed gear box with a servo that sits inline with the shaft. Invisible outside of the blinds if you route the cables correctly.
I controll mine with esphome and home assistant rock solid for years
alright2565 · 4m ago
If this is your model, would you mind making the first pic a picture of it installed? It's hard for me to visualize how it is supposed to work.
AnotherGoodName · 5h ago
Fwiw automated blinds in the bedroom are a 100% no brainer benefit. It's wonderful and better than an alarm clock with 0 mental load (set the times to open close across the week once and then never think about them again, you can keep the weekend manual if you like).
As in a lot of home automation actually makes things worse. Replacing a convenient light switch with an app? 100% terrible idea and actually makes things inconvenient, don't automate those.
But the blinds, specifically those in your bedroom? Do it! One of those life hacks that's really not that expensive and makes your life better with 0 cognitive load after initial setup.
WaitWaitWha · 2h ago
> As in a lot of home automation actually makes things worse. Replacing a convenient light switch with an app? 100% terrible idea and actually makes things inconvenient, don't automate those.
The key to proper home automation is not to destroy the "normal" functions already in place, but to augment them with automation.
Smart switches that do not function without connectivity are not smart. I discourage new implementation of smart-bulbs too as they break the "normal" bulb-switch function. I discourage smart plugs for the same reason. Same thing with valves. Imagine a valve that cannot be turned on or off manually. Horrific.
AnotherGoodName · 1h ago
My own scoreboard is how little i think of it.
An automated porch light that hasn’t been touched in 10years and blinds that had the schedule setup once and forgotten about for 5 years are examples of fantastic automation.
tasuki · 59m ago
> Do it! One of those life hacks that's really not that expensive and makes your life better with 0 cognitive load after initial setup.
I'd love to, actually. But where do I even start? How to choose the solution? I have some old blinds which leak a lot of light and wouldn't mind replacing them. Guess my only hard requirement is for the blinds not to connect to the internet.
goda90 · 2h ago
I've got Home Assistant set up and the app on my phone. But the only light switch I have automated is done with a standalone, battery powered timer with a motor to turn a dumb switch on and off. It's on my porch light so it turns on and off without me needing to be home or paying attention. Only have to override it on Halloween and shift it with the seasons.
cortesoft · 3h ago
My blinds don’t work as an alarm clock for me at all. I sleep with a pillow over my eyes, no amount of light is going to wake me up.
kulahan · 3h ago
I use a silk sleep mask. They’re incredible. Added benefit is that it helps hold your eyelids closed on days when you’re not very sleepy. It’s also one thing I only do when actually attempting to sleep. I swear I get sleepy the second I feel that super-light tension on my head
sgt · 3h ago
That'll just make it too easy for an assassin.
dzhiurgis · 3h ago
You are making assumption I want to wake up that early.
Quite opposite - I’m searching for way to completely black out the room since kids will wake up with slightest shred of light, far before daycare starts. And I’m not even living if far lats.
But yeah I still want them for convenience. Problem is I don’t want cables dangling around curtains and battery options are limited.
Etheryte · 3h ago
This comment makes no sense. You choose when you want your automated blinds to open, if you don't want to wake up early, just don't set them to open early?
ranger_danger · 2h ago
This comment also makes no sense... they said completely black out a room, which blinds alone cannot do.
J_Shelby_J · 2h ago
Batteries last more than a year and you can get ones with solar panels to recharge them.
XorNot · 1h ago
I just hard wire mine by going through the cornice with a flush conduit. It's a good place to put the manual shutoff switch as well.
shepherdjerred · 1h ago
For roller shades, I've had success with Ryse SmartShade [0] + their WiFi hub + Home Assistant.
Setup was not straightforward at all, and I have 10 windows, but it was worth it in the end.
You can write automations in YAML (or TypeScript with [1]), and your blinds can also be controllable with Siri or whatever voice assistant you like.
What are the child safety considerations to be careful of, with blinds, and with openers?
(I recall seeing warning stickers and design changes on ordinary miniblinds. I suspect that one of the changes involved having multiple pull cords be separate and loose, rather than a fastened together or a single looped cord. But I'd guess that's not the only safety design decision.)
buescher · 5h ago
UL 325 covers them and can be read (but not printed or saved) on UL’s website if you register. More dangerous than you might think though the real horror stories are with stage curtains. PSA for hacker news: Safety is the product of a process, not a feature, and standards are written in blood. You don’t get there by surmising, no matter how skilled, clever, or well-intentioned you are.
notpushkin · 4h ago
It totally can be saved if you try hard enough (and are not afraid of a pretty scary legal warning in the free view feature).
If the UL devs read this: if you want to cut your AWS bill, perhaps don’t send the images as BMP?
madaxe_again · 5h ago
I think the principle two things are “they can’t pull it off the wall and onto themselves” and “they can’t hang themselves”.
With automatic openers you add “they can’t get snarled up/lose a finger in the mechanism” and “they can’t electrocute themselves”.
I went extremely belt and braces with our blind opener - but it is toddler proof. Attached the lower end of the cord to the ceiling, attached a pulley that hangs on the cord, hung a 1kg weight from it, and used a solenoid from a broken linktap valve to pull a pin that allows the weight to fall and pull the cord.
Even with the blinds open the whole assemblage is entirely out of her reach, and it goes for the opposite effect to the poster’s implementation - blinds slam open in about half a second with a quiet whirr, as I prefer a jarring wakeup, and my wife would sleep through Armageddon. Reset is manual, but that’s fine, closing them is an optional and trivial activity.
AStonesThrow · 5h ago
What are the safety considerations of smart blinds opening up a bedroom at inopportune moments, such as children playing outside while you're having sex or changing clothes?
Is there a lockout mode for "I/we are not decent" or do the blinds just sort of majestically reveal the bedroom to your backyard/parking lot observers like curtains opening on a feature film?
duxup · 1h ago
I have a south side back of house open kitchen / dining / living room on my house. 11 Windows.
I have consumer model power roller shades. I love them. If you have a room that gets lots of sun / you like the views, being able to hit a button and open it's an amazing quality of life thing.
allenrb · 5h ago
Would measuring motor current be a better way to determine torque? Not an expert but seems like you could sense voltage across a fairly small shunt to do it.
cpgxiii · 5h ago
Motor current is a workable, but generally unsatisfactory, proxy for torque when using heavily geared motors. Far better to measure output torque directly if you can, which is what's being done here using what is essentially a series elastic mechanism (itself a very common way of implementing torque sensing).
To elaborate more, current sensing is only "better" in an ease-of-implementation sense, in that a lot of motor drivers already have current sensing built in/easily added. For some applications this is good-enough, but in terms of estimating "real number" torque from current, it can take a lot of work to characterize for geared motors.
buescher · 5h ago
Motor current is an excellent way to measure torque and is what is done in real-world settings all the time. As a hobbyist you might have to settle for relative torque if you aren't in a position to characterize a motor or you don't have manufacturer's data for it.
cpgxiii · 4h ago
I wouldn't say excellent. Motor current->torque is well correlated for motors in isolation, or with very low gear ratio. Not so with higher gear ratios. Can the current value be used to make control decisions for the motor? Yes. Does the current give you torque in Nm? No.
In the robotics world this is sometimes distinguished between actuators that report "effort" (i.e. a current-derived estimate) and actuators that report torque (i.e. actual torque sensing or direct-drive with current sensing). Both can be useful, but "effort" is not torque.
buescher · 4h ago
Current will never directly give you torque in Nm which is a straw man argument - you will always have to know the motor constant, input voltage, coil resistance, and gear ratio to back out torque. That's characterizing the motor. Yeah, that's a lot of work for a hobbyist, but it's not at all unreasonable to consider a motor an excellent torque transducer - that's what it does.
cpgxiii · 4h ago
If the current->torque behavior of motors with gearboxes could be generally well characterized, the entire distinct market sector of "cobots" would not exist because every industrial robotics vendor would have long had good torque modelling on their actuators.
As it stands, Universal Robots (and likely their clones) do use current->torque characterization for their actuators (which, amusingly, is then stored on a robot-specific USB drive or SD card), and their torque sensing is shit. Shit enough that for any useful force/torque application you still need a separate force/torque sensor. Schunk, for some of their electric parallel grippers with "force" feedback, only characterizes them at a single velocity and there is significant error in the force estimate at any other speed. Good current->torque characterization of a complete actuator is so difficult that approximately no vendors in the automation space are willing to do it.
Karliss · 2h ago
The main keywords here are high gear ratio and cheap parts. I am not making universal claims about all use cases. For most sane designs, sure electric motors are great at converting energy into torque. Normally you would want most of the electric energy to be turned into useful work. Which implies that electric power directly correlates with mechanical power or torque*speed.
The same can't always be said about gearboxes, especially for some of those targeted at hobby/toy use cases with crazy gear ratios like 1000:1 or higher. Gear ratio can be so high that you will strip the gears or make the shaft connection slip long before you can apply sufficient torque to slow down the dc motor which is almost free spinning and spending most of it's energy to overcome friction in first few gearbox stages instead of doing useful work. In a toy or hobby project when you want something to spin slowly it might not matter that the gearbox is <10% efficient if it allows you to reuse same cheap brushed DC motor as hundreds of other toys. Increased torque is partially a side effect of slowing down the tiny motor not the primary goal, although at those slower speeds you probably want slightly higher torque but nowhere near as much as what the gear ratio gives in theory. Even some non toy use cases like cheap home appliances might occasionally use crappy inefficient gearboxes and dumbest electronics possible, especially if the 1-3W motor isn't main consumer of power. There might not even be motor controller or MCU to monitor the current.
It's not always question of lot of work for hobbyist, as it is result of using cheap of the shelf parts and modules which are optimized with different goal in mind and give very poor signal to noise ratio. Doesn't matter how much characterization you do if the change in temperature, grease viscosity and distribution, plastic flex produces higher variance in motor load than any force you can apply to final gearbox stage. I guess the more careful choice of suitable combination of parts from more specialized stores can be considered "lot of work for hobbyist" compared to picking first result on amazon or whatever you found in your junk bin so your argument still stands.
Of course high gear ratio or slow speed doesn't always mean inefficient gearboxes. There are solutions for slow rotation with or without high gear ratio which are reasonably efficient thus allowing to use motor current for estimating torque. And any serious or well designed equipment will use them. But that usually means more complex gearbox, motor controller or purpose built electric motors all of which is either more expensive or require high MOQ orders from manufacturers.
numpad0 · 3h ago
There was a news story few days ago that Sony is launching an Ethernet controlled smart motor with integral reducer for robotics applications, and it has encoders on both sides of the reducer plus torque on output shaft. There's nothing so far on the English side of the public Internet about it, at all.
... so I doubt motor torque be end all be all. Especially when Sony does it like that.
01100011 · 5h ago
That's how we did it when I worked on a gate-arm/access control system. I'd monitor current and if a spike occurred I'd back the arm up because it likely hit something.
TheKnack · 4h ago
I have these on all of my blinds and they are amazing. You can sometimes get them on sale for $50-60 each. They come with a solar panel that keeps them charged. You can add a hub that makes them work with HomeKit.
Does anyone know if something like this already exists for the heavy duty, built-in shutters they have in Italy? The kind that close and form a barrier over the window and are operated with a flat roll of fabric from inside.
patrickk · 3h ago
They also have them in Germany. I used to have the manual "flat roll of fabric" in the past, and upgraded the entire rollers in the house to electric ones (I don't know if it's possible to only upgrade the fabric roll -> electric switch without upgrading the entire shutter).
After you have electric-controlled rollers, you can control them via any automation you want by installing a "Shelly Plus 2PM" device behind each switch.
I connect the Shellys to home assistant, and from there, trigger all the rollers to go down a certain number of minutes after sunset. They all rise at a certain time in the morning. You can always trigger them manually too, of course. ChatGPT can spit out very complex YAML for HA if you want to make life easier, your only limit is your imagination.
notpushkin · 4h ago
I’ve seen those somewhere in the Southeast Asia so I think I’ve got what you’re saying. The challenge would be to replace the stopper you currently have (because it’s hard to work around it with a motor) and replace it with something you can activate electrically.
lultimouomo · 3h ago
Yes, the keyword you are looking for is "tapparella motorizzata".
vanschelven · 3h ago
I wondered what an "homebrew automated" was and by which mechanism it could blind the person who opened it...
Person just wanted to automate a few "dumb" appliances but ended up building his own system (software and hardware) to do this.
I wish I had time to bike shed like this. Just learning, tinkering, and enjoying life.
ge96 · 3h ago
Funny I used that white magnetic encoder and now I see it everywhere
ThrowawayTestr · 3h ago
I love the choice of enclose.
tayo42 · 3h ago
I need to figure something like this out. My bedroom has this arch window about 3-4ft wide that's over 10ft high that I've permanently blacked out so I can sleep in. I'd love an easy way to open it and get light in the day though.
KennyBlanken · 2h ago
"I doubled up the relays feeding the main motor and the heating coil, which gives a lot more headroom on the amperage"
...That's not how that works. One of the relays is going to close first, and those set of contacts will take all the load. Similarly, one set is going to bear all the drama from breaking the connection (and with the motor, there's inductive kickback.)
The correct way to do this is to look up the motor rating for your relay and then size accordingly, not to do dumb shit like "oh I'll just double up these two relays."
Of course he fucks up and uses a resistor from mains to logic, too. Mains and logic should never, ever, ever come anywhere near each other. They're supposed to be physically isolated on a PCB, cutouts in the board, even.
Don't fuck with mains / appliances / HVAC / household water supply if you don't know what you're doing. This guy has no fucking idea what he's doing, and some winter day he's going to come home to a house that's 100 degrees inside and a flooded first floor (notice he didn't connect the water leak sensor?)
Home insurance is scummy, annoying, difficult and weasely in the best of circumstances. The second they figure out you had some chewing gum and duct tape hodgepodge running your dishwasher and that's what caused the flood, they will not only refuse to pay, they'll cancel your coverage on the spot.
Then you find out the joys of not having home insurance coverage on a house with a mortgage.
Edit: Holy christ I missed this part: "It seemed to be due to the push-on jumper cables either becoming too loose after years of jiggling or perhaps oxidizing and self-insulating a bit."
That is how you start a fire, people.
robocat · 1h ago
> Don't fuck with mains / appliances / HVAC / household water supply if you don't know what you're doing. This guy has no fucking idea what he's doing
A little OTT. How do people learn to maintain their house or learn to hack improvements? Should we all have your expertise? Perhaps you think paying a qualified installer would be better?
Any work on your home or car or whatever runs risks. Making mistakes is often an important part of learning (and can be expensive). Being a Swiss watch isn't a good compromise.
It is great that you share your knowledge: good feedback is difficult to get.
SchemaLoad · 21m ago
>How do people learn to maintain their house or learn to hack improvements?
You don't when it comes to mains electric. You hire an electrician who learned through study, training and certification rather than just proding things until it either works or kills you.
Play around with low voltage power all you want but leave mains voltage alone.
robocat · 4m ago
I live in a 240 Volt country with reasonably strong regulations.
Yet I'm regularly having to identify and resolve safety issues because other people create risks. Sometimes issues are historical, or have developed over time.
Some of those risks are created by qualified and licensed people.
I see people that have done the study, training and certification create serious risks. So I don't trust study, training and certification for my safety or safety of those I care for. I do use professionals but I'm very careful when choosing who to trust (for more than just electricity, water and gas).
We learn how to do things correctly because of our own interest in risks. I appreciated the comment because they didn't just say "don't", they also explained the engineering reasons for saying "don't".
However I am a risk-taker, and I take risks that would likely shock you. I am somewhat careful to avoid creating risks for others (when there is a floor level of risk, you can't go below the floor).
It's a balance. The logical conclusion of your world-view is that we shouldn't do anything, Don't fix that leaky tap without training! Too risky.
But nothing has the quality of life impact of smart blinds. It’s the best, and probably only, way to reliably keep your sleep schedule in sync. Smart lightbulbs - four of the brightest you can buy - are nothing compared to a window on a cloudy day.
At this point I gave up on blinds and put a shirt over my eyes to sleep. I thought about just covering the windows permanently but I don't relish that idea.
If the fabric itself isn't blocking light... You need better material. I have only ever had problem with light leakage in the edges, not in the fabric material.
I believe 'blackout thermal shades' is what to look for.
It's got some sharp edges - every time I've done a major auto-update it's broken something critical. You can run it alongside other controllers like the Hue Bridge, which is nice to have as a backup (since 90% of what most people connect is smart lighting). Probably the most useful simple automation I have is an motion activated dim light in the bathroom at night, but that's using Hue.
Then look at ESPHome, which is an ecosystem for making your own DIY sensors and controllers that can feed into HA. For example we have a Sensirion air quality sensor that triggers a smart switch connected to a fan if the particulate level gets high when cooking. You can go a very long way with on/off to control non-smart devices, and your sensors don't need to be particularly accurate (like absolute PM2.5) as long as the conditon you trigger on is repeatable.
The only thing to think about is what hardware ecosystem makes sense for you. For example there's at least four different competing standards for connectivity (WiFi, Zigbee, Z-Wave, Matter/Thread, etc). So getting a Zigbee dongle isn't a bad idea because then you can connect any IKEA or Hue device (among others).
The hue motion sensors pay for themselves pretty quickly.
The rest is zigbee and zwave switches and sensors. You can get cheap ones from ikea. You can get nicer ones from Zooz. I like Apollo for air quality sensors. The humidifier is the German brand Ventura. Zero maintenance. But it’s not smart so I got a power outlet that reports power usage. When it runs out of water the humidifier shuts off and the power goes to zero, so I have an automation that detects that and sends a message via the HA app.
Living in California and having fans move air around from cool rooms to warmer rooms has cut our AC bill significantly as a dc fan is a fraction of power consumption of a whole house AC. And also co2 levels stay much lower. Last week I set up my window fan to blow air in whenever it’s cooler outside then inside.
3d printed gear box with a servo that sits inline with the shaft. Invisible outside of the blinds if you route the cables correctly.
I controll mine with esphome and home assistant rock solid for years
As in a lot of home automation actually makes things worse. Replacing a convenient light switch with an app? 100% terrible idea and actually makes things inconvenient, don't automate those.
But the blinds, specifically those in your bedroom? Do it! One of those life hacks that's really not that expensive and makes your life better with 0 cognitive load after initial setup.
The key to proper home automation is not to destroy the "normal" functions already in place, but to augment them with automation.
Smart switches that do not function without connectivity are not smart. I discourage new implementation of smart-bulbs too as they break the "normal" bulb-switch function. I discourage smart plugs for the same reason. Same thing with valves. Imagine a valve that cannot be turned on or off manually. Horrific.
An automated porch light that hasn’t been touched in 10years and blinds that had the schedule setup once and forgotten about for 5 years are examples of fantastic automation.
I'd love to, actually. But where do I even start? How to choose the solution? I have some old blinds which leak a lot of light and wouldn't mind replacing them. Guess my only hard requirement is for the blinds not to connect to the internet.
Quite opposite - I’m searching for way to completely black out the room since kids will wake up with slightest shred of light, far before daycare starts. And I’m not even living if far lats.
But yeah I still want them for convenience. Problem is I don’t want cables dangling around curtains and battery options are limited.
Setup was not straightforward at all, and I have 10 windows, but it was worth it in the end.
You can write automations in YAML (or TypeScript with [1]), and your blinds can also be controllable with Siri or whatever voice assistant you like.
[0]: https://www.helloryse.com/products/rysesmartshade
[1]: https://docs.digital-alchemy.app/
(I recall seeing warning stickers and design changes on ordinary miniblinds. I suspect that one of the changes involved having multiple pull cords be separate and loose, rather than a fastened together or a single looped cord. But I'd guess that's not the only safety design decision.)
If the UL devs read this: if you want to cut your AWS bill, perhaps don’t send the images as BMP?
With automatic openers you add “they can’t get snarled up/lose a finger in the mechanism” and “they can’t electrocute themselves”.
I went extremely belt and braces with our blind opener - but it is toddler proof. Attached the lower end of the cord to the ceiling, attached a pulley that hangs on the cord, hung a 1kg weight from it, and used a solenoid from a broken linktap valve to pull a pin that allows the weight to fall and pull the cord.
Even with the blinds open the whole assemblage is entirely out of her reach, and it goes for the opposite effect to the poster’s implementation - blinds slam open in about half a second with a quiet whirr, as I prefer a jarring wakeup, and my wife would sleep through Armageddon. Reset is manual, but that’s fine, closing them is an optional and trivial activity.
Is there a lockout mode for "I/we are not decent" or do the blinds just sort of majestically reveal the bedroom to your backyard/parking lot observers like curtains opening on a feature film?
I have consumer model power roller shades. I love them. If you have a room that gets lots of sun / you like the views, being able to hit a button and open it's an amazing quality of life thing.
To elaborate more, current sensing is only "better" in an ease-of-implementation sense, in that a lot of motor drivers already have current sensing built in/easily added. For some applications this is good-enough, but in terms of estimating "real number" torque from current, it can take a lot of work to characterize for geared motors.
In the robotics world this is sometimes distinguished between actuators that report "effort" (i.e. a current-derived estimate) and actuators that report torque (i.e. actual torque sensing or direct-drive with current sensing). Both can be useful, but "effort" is not torque.
As it stands, Universal Robots (and likely their clones) do use current->torque characterization for their actuators (which, amusingly, is then stored on a robot-specific USB drive or SD card), and their torque sensing is shit. Shit enough that for any useful force/torque application you still need a separate force/torque sensor. Schunk, for some of their electric parallel grippers with "force" feedback, only characterizes them at a single velocity and there is significant error in the force estimate at any other speed. Good current->torque characterization of a complete actuator is so difficult that approximately no vendors in the automation space are willing to do it.
It's not always question of lot of work for hobbyist, as it is result of using cheap of the shelf parts and modules which are optimized with different goal in mind and give very poor signal to noise ratio. Doesn't matter how much characterization you do if the change in temperature, grease viscosity and distribution, plastic flex produces higher variance in motor load than any force you can apply to final gearbox stage. I guess the more careful choice of suitable combination of parts from more specialized stores can be considered "lot of work for hobbyist" compared to picking first result on amazon or whatever you found in your junk bin so your argument still stands.
Of course high gear ratio or slow speed doesn't always mean inefficient gearboxes. There are solutions for slow rotation with or without high gear ratio which are reasonably efficient thus allowing to use motor current for estimating torque. And any serious or well designed equipment will use them. But that usually means more complex gearbox, motor controller or purpose built electric motors all of which is either more expensive or require high MOQ orders from manufacturers.
... so I doubt motor torque be end all be all. Especially when Sony does it like that.
https://us.switch-bot.com/products/switchbot-blind-tilt
After you have electric-controlled rollers, you can control them via any automation you want by installing a "Shelly Plus 2PM" device behind each switch.
I connect the Shellys to home assistant, and from there, trigger all the rollers to go down a certain number of minutes after sunset. They all rise at a certain time in the morning. You can always trigger them manually too, of course. ChatGPT can spit out very complex YAML for HA if you want to make life easier, your only limit is your imagination.
if Apple made window blinds...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv6EMd8dlQk
I wish I had time to bike shed like this. Just learning, tinkering, and enjoying life.
...That's not how that works. One of the relays is going to close first, and those set of contacts will take all the load. Similarly, one set is going to bear all the drama from breaking the connection (and with the motor, there's inductive kickback.)
The correct way to do this is to look up the motor rating for your relay and then size accordingly, not to do dumb shit like "oh I'll just double up these two relays."
Of course he fucks up and uses a resistor from mains to logic, too. Mains and logic should never, ever, ever come anywhere near each other. They're supposed to be physically isolated on a PCB, cutouts in the board, even.
Don't fuck with mains / appliances / HVAC / household water supply if you don't know what you're doing. This guy has no fucking idea what he's doing, and some winter day he's going to come home to a house that's 100 degrees inside and a flooded first floor (notice he didn't connect the water leak sensor?)
Home insurance is scummy, annoying, difficult and weasely in the best of circumstances. The second they figure out you had some chewing gum and duct tape hodgepodge running your dishwasher and that's what caused the flood, they will not only refuse to pay, they'll cancel your coverage on the spot.
Then you find out the joys of not having home insurance coverage on a house with a mortgage.
Edit: Holy christ I missed this part: "It seemed to be due to the push-on jumper cables either becoming too loose after years of jiggling or perhaps oxidizing and self-insulating a bit."
That is how you start a fire, people.
A little OTT. How do people learn to maintain their house or learn to hack improvements? Should we all have your expertise? Perhaps you think paying a qualified installer would be better?
Any work on your home or car or whatever runs risks. Making mistakes is often an important part of learning (and can be expensive). Being a Swiss watch isn't a good compromise.
It is great that you share your knowledge: good feedback is difficult to get.
You don't when it comes to mains electric. You hire an electrician who learned through study, training and certification rather than just proding things until it either works or kills you.
Play around with low voltage power all you want but leave mains voltage alone.
Yet I'm regularly having to identify and resolve safety issues because other people create risks. Sometimes issues are historical, or have developed over time.
Some of those risks are created by qualified and licensed people.
I see people that have done the study, training and certification create serious risks. So I don't trust study, training and certification for my safety or safety of those I care for. I do use professionals but I'm very careful when choosing who to trust (for more than just electricity, water and gas).
We learn how to do things correctly because of our own interest in risks. I appreciated the comment because they didn't just say "don't", they also explained the engineering reasons for saying "don't".
However I am a risk-taker, and I take risks that would likely shock you. I am somewhat careful to avoid creating risks for others (when there is a floor level of risk, you can't go below the floor).
It's a balance. The logical conclusion of your world-view is that we shouldn't do anything, Don't fix that leaky tap without training! Too risky.