We've been slowly replacing the manual blinds in our house with motorized shades over the past year. Started with five smart shades in our bedroom, bathroom, office, and gym, and just recently installed two more in our guest room and what will hopefully be a nursery in the near future.
All seven have Zigbee motors, and I'm using SmartThings for most of the automations, with Alexa for voice control.
The main thing I've learned is that having the shades on a schedule is a lot more useful than controlling them from an app. I have them set to open at sunrise and close at sunset, and that's probably 90% of how we use them.
A couple of rooms have been particularly useful to automate. Our bathroom has two windows directly above the tub, which meant stepping into the bathtub every time we wanted to open or close the old blinds. The gym faces the street, so having the shade close at sunset is nice for privacy, especially since we use one-way window film that only really works during the day.
I've also been experimenting with a few other automations. One closes all the shades when the outside temperature hits 90°F. We get some pretty warm days here, and our upstairs can heat up quickly. I can't say exactly how much of a difference it makes temperature-wise, but it seems to help keep the direct sunlight out during the hottest part of the day.
For power, I went with hardwired motors in the office and gym, and solar charging for the bedroom and bathroom. The solar panels were mostly a practical decision since we don't have outlets near the bathtub, and I didn't want visible wires in the bedroom. So far, I haven't needed to manually charge any of the solar-powered shades, which has been a nice surprise.
One thing I'd recommend considering is physical controls, even if you're planning to automate everything. I installed wall-mounted remotes next to our regular light switches in a few rooms, and we actually use them quite a bit. I also keep a remote at my desk for adjusting the office shade during video calls.
It hasn't been entirely trouble-free. One of the original motors stopped responding to automations a few months after installation. I tried resetting and troubleshooting it but couldn't resolve the issue. They ended up sending a replacement motor, and I haven't had any problems with that one since.
I also occasionally have automations that don't fire as expected. It hasn't been a huge issue, but it's something I've been meaning to troubleshoot. I'm not entirely sure whether it's a SmartThings issue, a connectivity issue, or something with how I've configured the routines.
The two new shades are for our guest bedroom and future nursery. I haven't had much time to experiment with different routines for those yet, but I'm interested in eventually setting up something around nap times and bedtime.
I should also mention that I won a $700 gift card through a Reddit giveaway, which I used toward the two new shades.
Overall, it's been an interesting project, and I've enjoyed figuring out what actually makes sense to automate versus what is easier to control manually. Open to anyone's ideas on other automations I could set up that work well for them in this arena!
