Somfy integration - URTSii or ZRTSi ?

[CPRail1]

All, 

We're having new Somfy RTS blinds installed and I'm wondering which of the interfaces people find better to use  - the older URTSii or the newer ZRTSi ? 

I'm running an ISY 994i/IR PRO @ v.5.0.15A. 

I've read through all the threads with "Somfy" in them but having not yet dived into programing and the like beyond the typical scenes and programs I'm honestly not sure which would be the group's recommendation for the simplest and/or better choice. 

I would really appreciate advice as to which of the interfaces any of you have found works best in the ISY world. 

Cheers, Peter

[jfai]

Had to make the same decision a while back and went with Somfy MyLink. The other options require additional hardware for connecting to a controller like the ISY. The MyLink device works standalone: you can set up simple scenes and schedules without ISY integration. 

I'm adding more and more Somfy motors in my house and am working on a nodeserver for MyLink as well.

Edited May 2, 2020 by jfai
Removed incorrect information

[Techman]

I'm using the ZRTSI which integrates well with the ISY and easy to set up.,

The ZRTSI requires that you have the ISY Zwave module.

 

 

 

Edited July 4, 2019 by Techman

[auger66]

I set mine up a year or two ago with a Somfy URTSI II and an Autelis Shade Control for Somfy RTS. I don't have any Zwave.

The Autelis is reliable and easy to integrate into the ISY with network resources. I've found the URTSI range isn't the best, but I've gotten it to work. For some reason, the roller shades have better range than the curtains.

Autelis may be out of business, though. They still have a website, but all of their products are showing "out of stock." They may be still making them by request. You would have to contact them if you're interested.

If you're using Zwave with your ISY, I would definitely go with the ZRTSI. It would give you a lot more placement flexibility and one less component to buy assuming no range problems.

Edited July 6, 2019 by auger66

[CPRail1]

Gents, 

My apologies for my extremely tardy reply to you all but I thought I'd posted earlier. Oy! 

Thank you for your help. The home automation expert (hope that's true) from the company installing everything believes that the ZRTSI is the way to go and I do have the Z-wave capable ISY although I've not played with it much as of yet. 

Cheers, Peter

[garybixler]

jfailenschmid Hi

I have the Somfy MyLink  and use tcp commands setup in the  ISY's network resources to control Somfy motors. You mentioned a node server for MyLink but I was not able to find any in PolyGlot for the MyLink.  Just the URTSii  that uses a serial connection. Is a MyLink node server something that may be available in the future?

Thanks for any info.

Gary

[Envirogreen]

Is there a polyglot to connect to MyLink I’m hoping there is enough people that use somfy for someone to develop this (if it doesn’t already exist). 
 

my alternative is Lutron with a ra2 controller. Is there integration for this?

[jfai]

I developed and am using at my home for a few months a server that accepts HTTP requests from the ISY (Network Resources). The server translates HTTP requests into the Somfy Synergy commands required to control Somfy myLink devices on the local network. myLink scenes and individual devices are controllable and addressable by id, name, or alias. 

Sample network resource definition to run a myLink scene with 4 shade motors and 2 curtain motors:

POST /mylink/command HTTP/1.1
Host: 192.168.0.32:3300
Content-Type: application/json

{"command":"scene","target":"GreatDay"}

This was the first stage of developing a robust node server for Somfy myLink. The next stage would be to interface with Polyglot.

There doesn't appear to be much demand for a Polyglot node server for myLink.

A quick survey of Somfy motor references in the UDI forums for the last two years or so:

Z-wave - 5 (3 undecided)
myLink - 4 (2 undecided)
ZRTSI  - 3
URTSII - 2
Tahoma - 1 (1 undecided)
Other  - 3 (3 undecided)
------
Total  - 18 (9 undecided) 

What's your budget for a Somfy myLink nodeserver? 

Edited May 2, 2020 by jfai
Added forum survey data

[garybixler]

I have been using these commands directly from the ISY network resources to the MyLink for two Somfy motors.

tcp,  host 192.168.20.54,  port 44,100

{"method":"mylink.move.up","params":{"auth":"myhome","targetID":"CC10847C.1"},"id":1}

[jfai]

Yup, that works - most of the time.

myLink is connected to the network with Wi-Fi (2.4 GHz only). myLink RTS is radio-frequency. Depending on your Wi-Fi coverage, locations of the myLink devices, locations of the Somfy motors, the myLink commands will be missed by the motors, or some myLink device isn't reachable. You also need to make sure that no two ISY programs send commands to the myLink devices concurrently or even too close together. Coding the myLink device/scene id into the network resource is error-prone when you make changes to the myLink registrations.

The service deals with device discovery, command retries, throttling, name mapping, logging of command results/errors, among other things.

[garybixler]

@jfai      I would appreciate having a MyLink node server.  Thanks in advance if you decide to go forward and create the node server.

Gary

[Envirogreen]

I’m thinking that I’ll wait for the next version of tomaha to come out instead of MyLink as I understand that is the somfy go forward platform

 

id certainly be willing to pay when the store is available. No idea what pricing is going to be for different offerings 

[jfai]

Somfy Tahoma is their attempt to get into home automation and you'll need to purchase their hub. Why would you want another hub in addition to the ISY? I can't imagine that their hub will be more cost-effective than the myLink. Historically, Somfy's APIs are closed to the general public. They only support higher- end automation partners. I've tried to contact them several times about the Synergy (myLink) API, with no results. I had to search long and wide to find authorative information about the Synergy API in the public domain.  

Edited May 2, 2020 by jfai

[Envirogreen]

I thought the somfy hub was needed to connect to the ISY

 

if not that is even better

[jfai]

The alternatives to integrate ISY with RTS motors through myLink:

• ISY ---> TCP N.R. ---> myLink ---> RTS motor
• ISY ---> HTTP N.R. ---> myLink ---> RTS motor (requires an HTTP-to-TCP service - I haven't published mine)
• ISY ---> Polyglot myLink N.S. ---> myLink ---> RTS motor (requires a myLink node server - needs to be developed)

The Tahoma hub would replace the myLink device(s). How the Tahoma hub connects to the ISY is not knowable, unless the Tahoma API is published by Somfy. I would expect that the Tahoma hub is more expensive than myLink because it has more capabilities as a home automation hub. Somfy Tahoma uses ZigBee and is targeted at larger installations for homes larger than 7000 sq.ft. or more than 10 rooms/zones with Somfy motors. I don't know if Tahoma can be used for RTS motors. One myLink can handle up to 16 RTS channels and you can join up to 10 myLinks for multi-zone control.

Edited May 29, 2020 by jfai
Added more information about Tahoma

[Envirogreen]

This is helpful

 

is there an isy/polisy—> Rts option. No somfy hub?

[Brad]

I've been using this setup since 2017.

Somfy Node Server (WiFi) -> Global Cache ITach Flex WiFi -> URTSI (serial port)

I've had this running on a Raspberry Pi 3 in one room, ITach sitting next to my router in the home run closet and URTSI in the room with the drapes.  The URTSI had range problems when sitting in the home run closet 2 rooms and a hallway away.  Fortunately I had a spare ethernet port in the room with the drapes to solve the range problem easily.

 

[auger66]

On 10/21/2019 at 11:12 PM, garybixler said:

jfailenschmid Hi

I have the Somfy MyLink  and use tcp commands setup in the  ISY's network resources to control Somfy motors. You mentioned a node server for MyLink but I was not able to find any in PolyGlot for the MyLink.  Just the URTSii  that uses a serial connection. Is a MyLink node server something that may be available in the future?

Thanks for any info.

Gary

Would you mind sharing the MyLink tcp commands you use for network resources? Thanks

Edited May 30, 2020 by auger66

[garybixler]

@auger66  Hi my network resource is set to 'tcp' ,  'Host '  Your Somfy MyLink IP,  'port'  44,100 ,  'Mode'  Raw Text

body:

{"method":"mylink.move.up","params":{"auth":"myhome","targetID":"CC10847C.1"},"id":1}

The three commands I have are mylink.move.up, mylink.move.down and mylink.move.stop.

The targetID is found in the APP.

The channel is determined as the last number in 'CC10847C.1'. In this case 1 is the channel.

Auth I think is what you call your remote in the APP

Gary

Edited May 30, 2020 by garybixler

[auger66]

Many thanks.

I'm looking for the best super robust way forward for some new Somfy roller shades in a rental unit. All of the Somfy solutions get poor reviews (myLink, ZRTSi, URTSi II, etc.,) mostly due to range issues. I'll try myLink and network resources first and cross my fingers.

And how 'bout Elon yesterday?!!! ? Well done!

[jfai]

@auger66 Somfy recommends that a RTS transmitter is no more than 25-35 feet away from the receivers, although most RTS transmitters claim longer range under ideal conditions, i.e., not in any real house. In practice, this means that you'll need a myLink in every large room, or at least for each zone of rooms where all motors linked to that myLink are within 25-35 feet. Additionally, myLink connects over 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi, therefore the quality of Wi-Fi connectivity needs to be considered at the myLink location.

If you use network resources to send TCP commands to myLink, make sure that you only send one command concurrently to any of the myLinks in the system. myLink doesn't like overlapping requests. This is actually not trivial to achieve with a controller like ISY due to the nature of an event-based system. You may find yourself having several, independent ISY programs that send myLink commands and synchronizing those programs isn't really straightforward nor desirable.

I have an installation with two myLinks and 20+ motors and reliability is very good, albeit not perfect. There is this one particular curtain motor which doesn't receive a request  maybe 1 out of 50 times. The motor is on the same wall as the myLink, about 12 feet away, across a patio door. The motor is part of a myLink scene with other motors, and all the other motors are much further away. Such is the nature of RF.

By the way, my ISY does not send TCP commands to myLink directly, instead I run a relay service (on the Polisy), as I have mentioned several times in this thread and others.

 

[auger66]

Thanks for the input. I'll be putting my commands in programs so I should be able to control the overlapping commands. Plus, there are only two.

That condo is small, and the motors are in separate rooms but pretty close together. Hopefully, close enough. I have seven Somfy roller shades and curtains in my condo. The roller shade motors have better range.

I'm running Polyglot on a RPi in my place. It's not nearly reliable enough to put in someone else's place. I have to go in and restart the Hue nodeserver often. Same thing with DarkSky, but I removed DarkSky as I don't need it anymore. I put a RPi restart command to run every day at 4am, but I still have to restart the Hue nodeserver once a week or so. The Sonos nodeserver seems to always work. We'll see what happens when S2 comes out in a week.

The ISY is rock solid so I'll be sending the Somfy tcp commands from the ISY directly. We'll see how it works out. I was going to buy a Zwave module for the ISY and use the Somfy Zwave interface, but many here didn't think that would work.

[Dean]

I continue to struggle with getting my URTSii to work. All of the issues with the serial port have been cleared and you can see the commands issued to the shades in the Somfy nodeserver log. I have the URTSii on channel 1 and I can get the shades to work by manually using the buttons on the front of the URTSii. It just seems that the command is not being sent out to the shades. If the URTSii can control the shades from the front button, I'm just not sure why the command will not go through to the shades.

If anyone has successfully gotten the URTSii to work through the Somfy nodeserver, please tell me how?

[jfai]

I don't use the URTSII. If you can operate the shades by pressing buttons on the URTSII, then the issue is between the nodeserver and the URTSII, e.g. bit rate, number of error correction bits, pin out, cable termination,, etc.

 

[Brad]

@Dean what is your exact setup?  Is the Somfy nodeserver configured to use a local serial port on a raspberry pi?  Is the nodeserver configured to send a TCP command with serial data to a TCP/Serial converter?