Best battery powered curtains w/ the most reliable controller at the best price

Other Devices & Integrations Garage & Window Covering Control
1

Recommendations?

Currently I have Pella and for between the glass solar and “roomside” battery roller blinds, the solar blinds are hard to beat in between the glass, but I am addressing this to “roomside” curtains.

I have to add blackout curtains to my daughter’s room, I could use Pella but my wife wants curtains over roller blinds. Of course I just like to automate everything.

What do you recommend and what bridge device do they use?

2

Does Pella use Somfy RTS or their own 433MHz radio? Somfy is currently releasing a battery powered curtain/drape motor, so it uses Somfy RTS radio for control. It offers a detachable battery pack that you can even have an extra one charged and swap them out if needed, or plug-in overnight to charge and give you 90 days or more depending on the curtain/drape weight.

3

I have QMotion’s battery powered curtain rod, which is very cool, but my version is not integrate-able with my QConnect, although should be integrate-able with their most recent QSync (all 433 mhz, but QConnect and older blinds and older QSync are different modulation).

They now have a zigbee 1.2 HA version, which SHOULD be integrate-able directly with the VeraPlus, no other controller required, but I haven’t seen anyone try it yet. Ordinarily I would be an early adopter, but I am still Vera3/UI5 - AND I am waiting for QMotion to release their Z-wave motors and plan to retro-fit all my QMotion roller blinds and curtain rod to z-wave once available.

4

Good question, not sure, I can probably send pictures of their motor. I know they OEM it. Pella’s hand held remotes are nice, to communicate with ZWave they require a bridge. The bridge is first added to ZWave controller, then you add in the blinds to the bridge. The blinds can pair to up to 6 devices I believe?? So you can have the remote or more than one remote and the ZWave bridge (counts as a remote to the max pairing limit) to one blind.

5

Not sure if it is the absolute cheapest way and it is very manual but this is what I used:

I actually found them cheaper on Ebay.

http://www.monoprice.com/product?c_id=122&cp_id=12212&cs_id=1221201&p_id=11993&seq=1&format=2
http://www.ebay.com/itm/262450209478?_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT
https://www.amazon.com/Super-Power-Supply?-Splitter-5-5x2-1mm/dp/B00RO93F9I/ref=pd_sim_sbs_147_8?ie=UTF8&dpID=31ZqFvxOj8L&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR160%2C160_&psc=1&refRID=YDCFCP625SJC45EVT4SK

Had to make a cable by shrink wrapping a old phone cable to the mono price zwave controller.
The Y cable is to split power from the battery box, It takes 8 AA batteries to deliver the 12V to the motor and the whole thing can be set on the wall or the curtain motor. It works perfectly. I have 3 curtains automated that way. The thing I like most is that they can still be operated manually since the motor disengages when not working.