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Would like to control new skylight shades


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Posted

We just had a new roof installed along with new skylights with solar battery operated shades for the skylights.  The shades are made by Velux - their Velux Integra series.

They use the io-homecontrol protocol to operate.  They came with battery operated remotes (one for each), their model KLI 312.  They did not come with a Velux KLF 200 - those are currently not available because of the chip shortage, although I don't think it would be a solution for me anyway.

My goal is to be able to operate the shades with both my ISY and Alexa. 

The Velux website is very frustrating - it's very difficult to get specs on their stuff and many links take you to broken pages.  Their online store is closed because of the current chip shortage.  Google searches lead me to mostly European sites that do not ship here to the states.

I have discovered an io-homecontrol hub that may operate my shades - the Somfy 1870600.  It's new and available on Ebay from a reliable vendor.  (It's not for sale in the US yet.)

The protocols include io-homecontrol, RTS, Zigbee 3.0 and it works with Alexa. 

My question is this - is there an easy to control the Somfy with my ISY because of it's Zigbee compatibility?  (My model ISY has Z-wave.)  I'm also running Polisy on a Raspberry Pi.

 

 

Posted
Just now, Athlon said:

We just had a new roof installed along with new skylights with solar battery operated shades for the skylights.  The shades are made by Velux - their Velux Integra series.

They use the io-homecontrol protocol to operate.  They came with battery operated remotes (one for each), their model KLI 312.  They did not come with a Velux KLF 200 - those are currently not available because of the chip shortage, although I don't think it would be a solution for me anyway.

My goal is to be able to operate the shades with both my ISY and Alexa. 

The Velux website is very frustrating - it's very difficult to get specs on their stuff and many links take you to broken pages.  Their online store is closed because of the current chip shortage.  Google searches lead me to mostly European sites that do not ship here to the states.

I have discovered an io-homecontrol hub that may operate my shades - the Somfy 1870600.  It's new and available on Ebay from a reliable vendor.  (It's not for sale in the US yet.)

The protocols include io-homecontrol, RTS, Zigbee 3.0 and it works with Alexa. 

My question is this - is there an easy to control the Somfy with my ISY because of it's Zigbee compatibility?  (My model ISY has Z-wave.)  I'm also running Polisy on a Raspberry Pi.

 

 

No. The Isy doesn't support ZigBee ha. Another thing is if it's not available in the us, there may be compatibility issues

  • Like 1
Posted

Before I start, the following is a kludge I’l used years ago. Way before nodes, polyglot and Polisy.

I took RF remotes apart and soldered the button contact points to relays. I used an IR controlled relay board but same could be done with a RPi relay board. When IR or network command for RPi is sent, it momentarily close the relay which mimics a button press.

If you can hide setup and cost of extra remotes is not an issue, it works great but is far from elegant. I know nothing about zigbee and interfacing to it so Keep looking for better but as a backup…

  • Like 1
Posted
3 minutes ago, hart2hart said:

Before I start, the following is a kludge I’l used years ago. Way before nodes, polyglot and Polisy.

I took RF remotes apart and soldered the button contact points to relays. I used an IR controlled relay board but same could be done with a RPi relay board. When IR or network command for RPi is sent, it momentarily close the relay which mimics a button press.

If you can hide setup and cost of extra remotes is not an issue, it works great but is far from elegant. I know nothing about zigbee and interfacing to it so Keep looking for better but as a backup…

Sometimes, the inelegant solutions are the best solutions

  • Like 3
Posted

Thanks to you both.  I'm not opposed to a little soldering.  I'll just have to figure out where... 

Each shade came with it's own remote, and they can each be programmed to any other shade.  So, I can 'pair' two shades to one remote so I'll have an extra remote.

Is there a node server that will tell my RPi to activate the relay?

 

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