Need some advice on zwave project

[Guitartexan]

Hello all.

 

A little background on what I'm trying to do first.....

 

I have been working on controlling my window blinds. I want control from a wall switch or potentiometer, the ability to run in auto from luminosity as in if its very bright outside the blinds would modulate to maintain a certain luminosity range in the house. I also want ability of temperature control to open the blinds in winter to allow warm sunshine in or close in summer to save on AAC bills. I want the ability for programming a schedule, for security purposes among other things, to make it appear someone is home. And lastly, I want to say 'Alexa, open living room window shades 50%'.

After extensive experimentation with NRf24 chips and esp8266 wifi chips I realized that although they did work, these methods were far to much work and still I was not going to achieve all my goals.

It has dawned on me that what may work is a repurposed zwave device board.

With that lead in- here is what I'm looking for:

 

A zwave control board that would provide forward and reverse signal (open/close blinds) which would fit into the head rail of the mini blinds. The open/close signals would then go to a servo which would physically open or close the blinds. I would power this from a wall wart or similar also mounted in the head rail.

The PC board out of a Econet water valve shutoff would work nicely:

 

http://www.amazon.com/EcoNet-Controls-EBV105-Installs-Automatic/dp/B010MG372E/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1452939305&sr=8-11&keywords=Fortrezz#productDetails

 

But the $135 price tag is too high for me.

I would also need to find a zwave switch that would work for open/close, but I don't think a standard zwave on/off switch would work, although I may be wrong here if all that's needed is the signal. The switch would need to be held down in up or down position until the blinds reached the desired amount of open or closed and then when the switch is released, the servo motor would halt the blinds at that setting. This need to hold the switch up or down is what makes me think a regular zwave switch would not work, although I'm not sure about a zwave dimmer switch.

I know this is possible and yeah, I know I could Somfy or Lutron or other this, but I'm after creating and building this myself for the satisfaction, hobby, and money savings due to the, in my blue collar paycheck opinion, insanely prohibitive prices of these engineered systems.

 

Here is one of the places I drew inspiration from, although there are several others as well.

 

https://homeawesomation.wordpress.com/2013/02/26/automated-window-blinds-with-arduino/

 

I would much appreciate and welcome assistance and a discussion about this particular type of control circuit. It has many, many uses I can think of.

 

Thanks everyone!

 

 

 

 

 

GT

[mwester]

Check out this z-wave device for I/O: http://www.fortrezz.com/index.php/products/mimo

 

You may need multichannel support for this, which is currently under development (and we hope to see that in the next 5.0.x beta, which UDI says should be soon!)

[Guitartexan]

mwester,

 

Yes, it appears that this device would work at the window blind, but this will need to get signals. Obviously I will send some via isy, but I also wish to have a wall control. Do you have any suggestions as to a zwave wall switch that will work as a press and hold switch? That is a switch that if I push on part of it, the blinds open until I release the push. Likewise if I push on the other part of the switch, the blinds will close until I release the push on the switch. This will give me the ability to fully open or fully close and everything in between.

 

 

GT

[kohai]

https://www.somfysystems.com/products/controls-integration/z-wave

[Guitartexan]

Thanks Kohai. These controls would work but are too expensive for my project. I think I may have found a very inexpensive way to do what I want to do with a little elbow grease of my own. I'll keep y'all posted on wether it works or not. I'll be using esp8266 and 555 timer.

 

 

GT

[dabadgreek]

I saw this recently in kickstarter, seems to be similar to what you're trying to accomplish: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/iblinds/iblinds-make-your-existing-blinds-intelligent

[Guitartexan01]

That is EXACTLY what I'm trying to do - without the $60 per window. I've got the cost down to about $20 per window using Nrf24l01 radio boards to handle the wireless communication. I will post a step by step with photos when it's done.

 

 

GT