$30 Homebrew Automated Blinds Opener (2024) | Hacker News Reader

$30 Homebrew Automated Blinds Opener (2024)

sifter.org

329 pointsbusymom0151 comments

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.

Could we hear more about your home automation stack? I'm looking to get into this myself.

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).

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

Can you? I should give it another try. I remember giving it a look a few years ago and it looked like a considerable amount of the setup was going to take place through a web GUI and then be persisted in its internal database. For a server I have to maintain over time, I'd rather things be as stateless as possible so that the cost of doing a scripted redeploy is basically zero.

PyScript runs inside HA and IIRC the Python in it has some quirks because of it.

AppDaemon[0] runs alongside it and is more "real" Python, it mostly just responds to events sent to it.

NodeRED has a direct integration and is (in my experience) best for complex state machines as you can easily debug them and actually see the logic work.

They also have a REST API to trigger things and a Websocket API if you need more real-time stuff (subscribing to events instead of querying states)

Then there is just straight up MQTT, where you need to do it all yourself.

What HA shines is that it tends to have ready-made community integrations with _everything_. And enough users for each that if something breaks, people will notice and it'll be fixed promptly.

[0] https://github.com/AppDaemon/appdaemon

Same. I use the hue automations to handle the lights. HA is for everything else.

The hue motion sensors pay for themselves pretty quickly.

RE ".....if the particulate level gets high when cooking ....." What is the particale counter level you use ? The number ? Just curious.

If over 100 ug/m3 for 2 minutes, turn on, if under 10 for 10, turn off. If someone's cooking, there is a very predictable spike that peaks in the low hundreds and then decays (super-) exponentially. It was surprising to see how long it takes to get back to ambient. I think you'd have to cook a steak with the stove extractor off to hit 1000 and our hard-wired smoke alarm would definitely be going off. I have no idea how absolutely accurate the SEN55 is, but the background level is usually below 5. I don't live in a particularly polluted place, so that seems reasonable. NOx is almost always zero.

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.

I think you can read about OP's automation stack here: https://sifter.org/~simon/journal/20240412.html

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.

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.

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).

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.

In cooler months the sun is lower over the horizon so the awning block less of it.

Indeed. Our 100 year old house has exactly the right-sized roof overhangs to shade to the bottom of the upper floor windows for the peak sun periods in the summer while still letting much of the winter sun in.

Then, for the lower floor we accomplish a similar effect with tall, deciduous plantings.

If you've ever encountered German rolladen you'll forget all about awnings.

Awnings are, IMO strictly better than those:

- You never have to move them

- In the summer (when the sun is higher) it blocks out lots of sun

- In the winter (when the sun is lower) it lets in more sun

With a properly designed house your roof overhangs should already take care of that: https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e5e91c81d669b...

https://www.house-energy.com/images/Overhang.gif

I feel like we design houses like we design cars and many other modern things, form over function and fix the problems by adding a ton of overcomplicated technologies.

If you have huge openings and no overhangs I'd go for something like that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPNMp6pMJjk

SOUTH (or NORTH) is doing a lot of the heavy lifting there!

What about houses with more than one level? The overhangs help not at all on the ground-floor.

You've never been in a room during the day with the rolladen all the way down. It's pitch black. It's pretty great. The good ones that separate slowly when rising also let you infinitely adjust the level of light and outside air that comes in.

Rolladen are superior because they can actually block 99.999999% of light when you want to watch a movie during a bright summer day or want to adjust your sleep schedule before travel.

You can 100% achieve a real temperature difference with unpainted wooden internal blinds. I'm sure you can achieve much more with an ideal setup but just sharing from experience, what OP has can easily make a difference of several degrees.

> unpainted wooden

can you please elaborate on this? logic dictates that if you cover the whole thing with plastic (paint) it will affect the performance of the material (I assume reflecting light (paint) vs absorbing light (raw wood).

I think you should read it as "even with unpainted wooden blinds". The right paint should indeed be better.

Exactly

Yep, that's a big one. Blinds that respond to sun position or presence can do wonders for keeping indoor temps stable

I have that, but for my entire house - in the Summer the walls get covered with sun blocking plates, and in the winter the walls are exposed to the rays of the sun.

If you want your own, you can buy it, it's called: Parthenocissus tricuspidata or you can get the Parthenocissus quinquefolia.

It really does work!

Spent a minute trying to figure out if I just walked into a botany version of the rickroll xD

Don't they damage the underlying brick work or other stuff? I think I've heard something like that before.

The kind with piercing tendrils does, but the species I listed have glue pads that cause no harm.

You do need to manage windows and gutters. What you do is pull the vine of off the border of the window and leave it dangling in the air (a little bit of it). This signals to the vine that it reached the end of what it's sitting on, and it will stop growing there. (If you cut it instead, it thinks it has an opportunity.)

Does it not create humidity issues? I always liked that look but I live in Belgium where it can be way too rainy in spring/autumn and i'd assume there'd be leaves then.

No humidity issues, the leaves have lots of space between them - they arrange themselves to catch every bit of sun as seen in 2D from a distance, but up close some stick out farther, some are closer, and there's plenty of air flow.

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.

Curtains.

bonus: they can make a space look homey instead of like an office!

I’d recommend a double rod, a blackout curtain on the rod closest to the window, and a “pretty” curtain on the outer rod. Gives you best of both worlds. Functional and pleasing, like at a hotel.

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.

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.

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.

Do you sleep during the day typically?

I used to work night shift and tried a few different things. Maybe the super-premium blinds block more light, but IME the most effective solution is blackout curtains. You'll need to hang a curtain rod that's wider than the window and get curtains that are wide enough, ideally just a single curtain rather than 2 if your window is narrow enough.

I have that. They have a magnet that keep the middle, where they connect light-tight.

Installation is key - they need to be oversized, covering the entire window AND the trim, and they need to be carefully installed so that they touch the trim.

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).

The tiniest amount of light will keep me from sleeping. Seriously. A neighbor can turn their lights on across the valley and if I have line of sight through a window, it’s over. I tried lots of things, and at long last, I found this mask that I absolutely swear by https://a.co/d/cDbUv9J

I lost it once, and bought two more, so that I would never be without one again. It’s the only sleep mask that works. It stays on all night. It does not leak light around the edges. Everything “shaped like your eyes” is a complete waste of time. This is the correct implementation of sleep mask, and I will never go back.

It’s super comfortable, and even slightly muffles noise since it wraps around your entire head. I do like the effect of good sealing ear plugs (Mack’s 31 Db only), but find them extremely uncomfortable to wear multiple days in a row. I’ll bring the Mack’s on vacation, just in case I am put next to an obnoxious snorer, there is very loud city noise all night, etc.

I don’t have issues sleeping in too late, because I actually get sleep with this thing, and after some time, I was just back on a normal rhythm, very consistently waking up at the same time.

I care deeply about sleep mask. Maybe it won’t work for everyone, but just in case it can help a single person, I am unloading my mask manifesto.

Tracking and other such indignities removed: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FSFBSXY

Sorry, I just used the copy link button on Amazon

Thank you for the link and the recommendation!

I'm just, you know, sort of neurotic about certain things, and I know I'm not alone here on HN. :)

Nah it’s all good, I appreciate the decluttering of the link!

The Wirecutter Reviews folks regularly look at sleep masks and I've used a few that they recommend though I can say from experience ones that have velcro straps on the back as opposed to being fitted to your head can be problematic from a comfort point of view if you normally sleep on your back.

I use the Nidra ones primarily as I can blink without my eyelashes catching the mask

https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-sleep-mask/

Another wrap around option with audio are the SleepPhones, while not designed to go over your eyes they work well that way and before switching to the Nidra and A20 ear buds that was my primary headset for about a decade.

https://www.sleepphones.com/

As to audio specifically, the Anker A20 work well even if you are a side sleeper

https://www.soundcore.com/products/sleep-a20-sleeping-earbud...

Notwithstanding the above, blackout blinds are awesome as long as they extend above and below and past the sides of the window frame. Can be quite low cost from places like Costco.

Get a sleep mask. They're opaque, so they block more light, and they don't cover your nose or mouth. Contoured sleep masks won't interfere with your eyelashes, helping reduce dry eye further.

Yet I found I sleep better when my body wakes up with the light instead of in total darkness until an alarm yanks me out of REM

If you get desperate, you can use painter’s tape and aluminum foil.

I do this at airbnbs when I'm traveling, particularly in the summer in Europe. The number of bedrooms I've been in with only gauzy curtains that get full morning sun is mind boggling. Hat tip to The Martian for turning me on to the trick.

We just had blinds installed from ublockout.com (hope it's not against the rules to link this - I have zero affiliation with them other than being a recent customer). The price was reasonable and they do the job. By far the biggest sources of light in my bedroom now are leakage under doors and various small LEDs (not enough to bother me, but of course there are ways to tackle that too).

I use a pull-down honeycomb shade with a basement window that's behind my TV:

https://www.amazon.ca/Persilux-Blackout-Cellular-Protection-...

It's a total blackout, though it definitely benefits from the window being deeply inset; on a typical bedroom window at midday I expect a bunch of light would find its way around that.

I got something similar (amazon yoolax blackout cellular honeycomb shades). They have extra help from L-shaped side panels blocking light along the sides.

bedroom is ultra-dark, with just a hint of light.

Those are pretty slick, will check those Yoolax ones out, have manual versions from Ikea that work well for both temperature control and light control.

https://www.ikea.com/ca/en/p/trippevals-blackout-cellular-bl...

I don't really understand having trouble with light when you sleep. Personally if I'm tired I happily sleep on summer noon with window opened. Just not in direct sunlight to avoid sunburn. And it's super pleasant experience for me. Better than regular sleep in the darkness at night.

Yeah this must be something that varies based on the person- I have some amazing sleep during daytime naps with sunlight streaming in. Consequently, I totally don't understand the fixation on blind openers, but I get that other people have different needs.

A good number of European countries have rolling shutters. Mine are probably older than me and make the room pitch black.

Maybe you want shades, instead? They can be motorized too.

Ya, it’s especially nice if you have a lot of windows and want to open or close them all at once. Lutron blinds were the first improvement we made to the house and was a no brainer even at the highish price we paid.

There's just something about waking up to actual sunlight (even filtered through clouds) that no amount of artificial brightness can replicate. It's like your brain knows the difference.

Indoor lighting is about two orders of magnitude dimmer, you’d need 1kW/m*2 (100W/sqft) to emulate a cloudless day at noon, so 20kW just to light up your living room, not accounting for LED losses.

You can get away with less because a good part of the power is outside the visible range.

Apparently 42% is visible! Less than I expected.

So around 470 W/m2 visible radiation.

No wonder a walk outside wakes you up better than a pot of coffee

There's a whole science of how natural sunlight differs from leds (and its biological effect) and how to recreate it. I believe SAD lights try to replicate sunlight, but generally modern LEDs, even "warm" ones are missing key wavelengths and have a different profile from sun/sky light. There are now LEDs much closer to real sunlight, but they are also more expensive (though arguable not more so than knocking out more windows.

What I'm surprised at is how rare fake windows/skylights are. I mean, such products/companies exist, but they seem to be relatively niche, and accordingly expensive (as in "call our sales team for pricing" expensive), not really ready for your usual DIY/domestic consumer.

I think what we really need is monitor/TV companies producing low-res, high lumen screens for this purpose, hopefully mass produced. I think Sony has produced a "passive" screen ("the Frame") , that is effectively a matt tv mean to display slow/static images to replace hanging pictures (and even stuffs the electronics in the wall to keep a low profile), but it's still a luxury niche.

My local IKEA has light boxes with a film sheet over them to make fake windows. They look surprisingly realistic.

yep, and for some reason they use them to sell blinds, but not the lightbox itself. I'm sure they'd sell like hotcakes.

Do "sunlight" LEDs even make sense? Why not use incandescents - they aren't inefficient if the IR spectrum is part of what you want.

>> But nothing has the quality of life impact of smart blinds <<

I have a ton of sleep problems and just wanna push back here a little... going for a brisk walk in the fresh air and sunshine every day works a lot better for me.

curious if you have any more details on your hacked up smart dehumidifier?

any chance you have a smart dehumidifier?

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.

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.

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?

This comment also makes no sense... they said completely black out a room, which blinds alone cannot do.

Blinds bolted on to the window frame can't, but blinds integrated into the window frame definitely can.

Yes they can, the thing you're looking for is literally called black-out blinds. Installed properly, they don't let any light in even when it's high noon outside.

I was not referring to specialized black-out blinds, just regular blinds.

Batteries last more than a year and you can get ones with solar panels to recharge them.

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.

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.

That'll just make it too easy for an assassin.

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

I like the pressure of the full pillow on my head and covering my ears

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.

Why not program the schedule for Halloween and have it turn on and off with the sun or sun2 integration

> 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.

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.

Same. Replacing all of my light switches with an app I have to use anytime I want to turn the lights on or off is indeed a huge step backwards IMHO.

Replacing all of the light switches with smart switches and monition sensors and things like this, plus automated schedules, to the point that you never need to switch any switches at all or think about lights, that is nice IMHO.

My lights are like this, I have a remote placed on top of each traditional switch. I never use the remotes, because most of it is automatic (e.g., dim lights for movies, turn off lights when we leave, turn on lights when we come home). Actually I do use my phone to switch to the "put child to bed" lighting.

I love my smart plugs and power strips! Mostly not for lighting or other high-touch purposes, but I do use a few Lutron Caseta plug-in dimmers for lamps that aren't on switched outlets as the remotes can go in a standard Decora-style wall plate and they work regardless of the hub being online.

I've got Zigbee and Wi-Fi/Tasmota outlets running the heating and lighting for my chicken brooders[0], my partner's plant lights, fish tank lights, probably more that I'm forgetting. At our cabin the mountains, an outlet + temperature sensor combined with Home Assistant's Thermostat helper gives us temperature control over an extremely basic window A/C unit and we cast an HA dashboard to a nearby Google Home screen. A smart power strip controls all of our "cabin intra" -- router, cable modem, LTE backup, etc. HA automations monitor them all and restart anything that stops working, and a Tasmota rule ensures that nothing can gets stuck in the Off state due to automation failure or operator error.

[0] https://imgur.com/a/uDGYBzh

> 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.

I've got a few lighting automations (turning the lights on when I come home, dimming the lights at night, etc.) and I disagree on the idea that home automation makes things all that much worse.

It doesn't take that much effort to find smart devices with a manual override button. As for lights, the IKEA ones I have are programmed to turn on after cutting the power regardless of smart setting, so all of my physical light switches still work if my automations fail. Toggling them that way kind of screws up the Zigbee network, but I'm not losing any functionality if the Zigbee controller dies.

As for the blinds, you have to place those strategically. You wouldn't be the first one to come out of bed or out of the shower and surprise flashing your neighbours because the smart blinds opened without you noticing.

> Fwiw automated blinds in the bedroom are a 100% no brainer benefit.

The only problem is finding one that doesn't use undersized plastic gears and cheap electronics that will invariably fail within 10 years. Most of them don't even have manual backups

>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 this isn’t automating anything, you are still just manually controlling things. I lights in my office automated, so that they do different things based on the time of day, room occupancy, door open or closed, etc. The lights follow circadian rhythm to be cool during the day and warm after dark. When it is close to bedtime, I run one command that changes the behavior of many things in the house, including turning off certain appliances and changing light behaviors. That includes the bedroom only turning on a red light under the bed when the door opens so we can find our way to the bed without waking the other person, and other rooms only turning on a very low level “night light” for moving through the house comfortably for a glass of water or something.

Everything can be overridden with manual input at light switches or app commands, and each behavior will turn off automatic control for a set period so it doesn’t fight me when I set something myself. That is home automation, not being able to turn your living room lights on by yelling at Alexa.

If you want something less jank I suggest this https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2071225

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

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.

Im not the person you’re asking but this looks like it sits inline to the actual shaft that turns the blinds. Not the pole that hangs down you turn by hand.

I looked at doing this exact thing and on my blinds there’s plenty of room in the top construction of the blinds to put a servo in there you would never see unless you’re looking for it. The rod itself was even not perfectly round so you could 3d print a shape to go around it very easily. I’m honestly shocked there’s not an aftermarket company already doing this exact thing.

How is it for sound isolation? One thing I like about the OP is attention to isolating the motor from the wall and blinds by soft bits so you don't get amplified motor buzz.

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.)

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.

What in Rube Goldberg is this setup?

Heath Robinson, in fact, as I’m British.

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?

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.

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?

"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.

> 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.

>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.

I live in a 240 Volt country with reasonably strong regulations.

Yet I'm regularly having to identify and resolve electrical 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.

The most recent: a licensed electrician putting a female supply plug on a friend's bus (I think because he knows houses have female sockets) and then suggesting taking the power supply lead and replacing the female connector with a male one (male to male leads are rather unsafe and illegal for good reason and the friends were skeptical).

I see people that have done the study, training and certification create serious risks. So I don't blindly 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 for ourselves!

Don't fix that leaky tap without training! Too risky. Good example since I lent my pipe wrenches to a friend and told her to have a go at replacing her tap. Very successful. It was outdoors so low risk?

> just proding things until it either works or kills you

I am not suggesting that strawman.

> You don't when it comes to mains electric

You definitely can. Any residential home in the US was probably built by those who had no formal training on "mains electric" and was inspected by a building inspector who also knows nothing really about electricity, but can follow guidelines.

It isn't difficult to buy devices that are built and rated to interface low voltage with "mains electric".

The issue is when you arrogantly assume you know things you don't, and that can harm you regardless of the application. Yet, that is often a path for some to learn and become experts or cautionary tales.

IMO, the gatekeeping risk-averse shouldn't stand on soap boxes attempting to dictate the lives of the curious.

For building mains devices, you should start by learning about creepage, clearance, double-insulation, the role of earth connections, the requirements for isolation between low voltage and high voltage, etc. Basically a good bit of electrical engineering.

This is different from what you need to know to do house wiring. That's done by following electrical code, which is basically a distillation of the engineering above into a set of relatively easy-to-follow rules.

"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?"

Start with low voltage instead of high voltage. Learn how it works. When you know enough that you want to move to high volt, don't start with improv -start with repairing outlets, replacing lights, etc. Things that have good directions, are not made up by you, and you can read and study. Read the relevant electrical code portions when you do it, understand why you have to do things the way it tells you to.

As you get better at it, and understand more and more, sure, branch out into your own stuff. But not until you understand it and can be safe.

Messing with mains when you have no idea what you are doing isn't just dangerous to you. It's dangerous to people around you, to future homeowners, to houses around you, etc.

Mistakes in the field are not meant to be part of the learning process, anymore than they would be in any other hazardous-to-life situation. Sure, they happen, and risks exist, but working on mains and high volt panels in any sane place is learned while you have you have someone overseeing your work and stopping you before the mistake is dangerous. People stop and ask whether what they are about to do is the right thing before they do it, not try it and see if it works.

Otherwise, it's not just money, it's your life, or someone else's life.

As for learning having risks and mistakes sometimes being expensive - sure. But having never dove in a pool, would you think it's a good plan to try to do a triple backflip off a ten meter high dive?

After all, any way you learn to dive runs risks, and making mistakes is often an important part of learning (and can be expensive).

You would instead hopefully start small, work your way up, understand things, and be appropriately fearful of things you should be fearful of.

Beyond that - I don't know why people are so tolerant of this kind of thinking with high voltage stuff.

People seem totally intolerant of it when it comes to natural gas lines, for example. Nobody is out there saying "well you know i just started fucking around with my gas line, added some tees and some relays to control some valves. Sometimes it smells funny but who knows. I wrapped some more tape around it and it seems fine most of the time".

Messing with mains is much more dangerous. Electrical codes are written in blood, the same as all others.

If you want to learn to do home fixing, you learn to be safe first, you start small, and you don't improvise until you can be safe.

Like safety everywhere, it's about understanding, discipline, and process. You can't shortcut it.

Looks to me like he maintained proper mains separation except for the one assembly mistake he admitted to (which wasn't catastrophic, obviously -- his wiring color choices look good for avoiding catastrophic errors). The relay board he's using (I recognize it) is rated for mains voltages, and power-wise is ok-ish for the task (I wouldn't choose it for a commercial product, but for his exact scenario--see below--it's probably ok). Doubling up the relays works fine for the main concern, which is overheating via sustained high amperage, which is how fires start. Surge risk is usually just welding the relay, not starting a fire (unless you're way over spec, which he is not), and it almost always welds shut, not open, so less likely to fail silently into the scenario where it's running on one relay and the sustained amperage becomes a risk, and instead into behaving obviously badly as is typical when motherboards go out (at which point you turn it off and rectify, just like a commercial one). He mentions the whole unit is isolated from mains when not in use, so in that respect it's safer than a commercial one as long as he doesn't run it when away from home/asleep.

Again, not a viable commercial design, but not insane with proper supervision either.

I was curious how you knew about the leak sensor so I did a quick search, and see you're just making things up to complain about -- that model has a turbidity sensor (which I suspect are the NC wires you noticed), but no leak sensor. Oh no! His water might be too turbid! Also the fill valve is wired inline with the float switch (in the machine itself), so it's double-covered for overflow prevention. Flooding seems highly unlikely.

The flaky connections he mentions are the 3 volt ones -- again, not a fire risk. Common for low-voltage contacts like that to get flaky in commercial devices too (e.g., face-plate contacts for thermostats, etc) and without disastrous outcomes. The high-voltage/amperage connections he uses are plugged into the OEM harness, so the same connectors as the OEM motherboard. So, again, seems like you're just making up things to complain about.

I don't want to encourage people to mess with mains power if they're not adequately informed, but it's also not a magical domain you can't learn about with a little research and caution (easier in the US than the UK...). And his gadget worked for years, by the sounds of it, which is better than any commercial appliance I've bought in the last decade...

But I agree he's probably gambling on the home insurance issue, even if his device(s) isn't at fault...

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.

https://us.switch-bot.com/products/switchbot-blind-tilt

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Yes, the keyword you are looking for is "tapparella motorizzata".

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.

[0]: https://www.helloryse.com/products/rysesmartshade

[1]: https://docs.digital-alchemy.app/

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.

That's puttering, tinkering, or experimenting. It's a good thing.

Bikeshedding is wasting time on trivial and pointless efforts or discussions. It's a bad thing. :)

https://phk.freebsd.dk/sagas/bikeshed/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality

Powered blinds and curtains are common, but powered home windows are very rare. Even though home control systems which managed windows would be great for heating and cooling. Interesting that they're not as common as electric auto windows.

(Linear induction motors were invented for curtains. Really. Kirsch Electrac)

> Linear induction motors were invented for curtains

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Wheatstone would like a word

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.

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.

I really wish there was a way to implement something like this for my skylight blinds. So far I haven't found anything which wouldn't need throwing away existing blinds and/or other expensive montage.

My mom's old house had a non-smart remote controlled Bosch drape opener about 6 meters / 20 ft long that was probably several hundred $.

Great job! I bet so many of us (self included) had this nagging need to do this, but you actually followed through. Kudos!

I had thought of this many times, but automating stuff around the house always hits a wall of "do I really want to have less reasons to stand up from my computer?".

I've had the opposite thought. If I had these blinds I'd set them to open around the time to when I want to wake up. The light would tell my body it's time to get up and I'd wake up earlier and possibly more awake. At least that's the hope. Vs now, my blinds are closed for privacy, the room is dark in the morning, dark rooms make me sleep longer.

The idea of waking up to a silent, 8-minute reveal of daylight is honestly kind of poetic

Sorry, I had to post this :|

if Apple made window blinds...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv6EMd8dlQk

I wondered what an "homebrew automated" was and by which mechanism it could blind the person who opened it...

I love the choice of enclose.

Nadine would be proud.

Funny I used that white magnetic encoder and now I see it everywhere

Reply on news.ycombinator.com