Just paired my new Bali Roller Shade to VeraPlus using the You Tube link posted here by RalexVera: Adding Graber Vitrual Cord Z-wave shades to SmartThings - ZebraBlinds.com - YouTube
Happy to report it worked perfectly. Thanks RalexVera. I’d been looking everywhere for instructions without luck prior to your posting.
I received 10 of the new AutoView Z-wave+ motors from Bali. But I have an older Vera3 with UI5. I tried the procedure from the YouTube video posted earlier on just one of the blinds (for starters) and it worked just fine at pairing the blinds with my Vera3. I can control it up/down as expected. There is a minor issue where it continually shows a red error about “unable to retrieve version info” from the blinds, but it doesn’t seem to affect the operation.
But then the fun/frustration started when I tried to add my original Z-wave+ Bali blind controller as a secondary remote. I was able to scan for and add it to the Vera3 fine. But there’s simply no way to get it re-added to control the blind. And I haven’t even tried the “single channel” remote yet. I gave up in frustration upon reading somewhere that these new blinds are Z-wave+ but my Vera3 UI5 is Z-wave only. Apparently I need a newer controller to work properly with the Z-wave+.
I’m kicking myself for not responding to the $50 off offer from MiCasaVerde mid-March, for a $149 VeraPlus at $99. I really intended to do the upgrade anyway … but just put it off a little too long, it seems. When I clicked on that e-mail link on Saturday, the offer had expired. Dang. So anyway, I ordered a new VeraPlus from Amazon and it will arrive later today. I’m hopeful that it will fix my Bali remote control issue … and that I’ll also be able to figure out how to set up the single-channel remote to operate sets of blinds together. The 10 blinds are arranged as: 3 dining room bay window, 3 living room bay window, 4 florida room windows. I have three single-channel remotes (one for each of these groupings) – plus 10 of the individual Bali remotes (one for each blind).
I’ll follow up with any news/tips once I’m done.
Greg
My new VeraPlus arrived an hour ago from Amazon. Some initial notes on the Vera3 (using UI5 firmware) to VeraPlus (using UI7) upgrade:
The instructions with the VeraPlus packaging tell you to go to http://home.getvera.com and login, and say that if a new user, click on “new account” or to login with your existing (Vera3) account. Well that doesn’t work. If you try logging in with the existing Vera3 (UI5) account, it just spins at “Checking credentials”. I found an article that describes the problem and the circumvention. You have to login to the home.getvera.com as a NEW user 'coz it’s unable to check the credentials of a UI5 account. Also, the new home.getvera.com (for UI7) has new password rules. So you use the same account name (and e-mail address and everything else in its registration page), but a different password.
I found instructions for transferring settings from older to newer Veras here: http://support.getvera.com/customer/en/portal/articles/1840689-intro-how-to-upgrade-from-vera-3-vera-2-or-veralite-to-veraedge-controller and chose the one applicable to me, i.e. “Upgrade to VeraPlus or VeraEdge from VeraLite, Vera 2 or Vera 3 running UI5” (http://support.getvera.com/customer/portal/articles/1840699-upgrade-from-ui5-on-veralite-vera-2-or-vera-3).
It tells you to go through the initial setup of the new controller, including assigning its name. This is done as part of the setup wizard – that you will be in upon first signing in successfully. Once you get to the point of adding devices, you just exit from the wizard, because we’re going to add them by copying from the Vera3.
The process of updating each of my Vera3 plugins broke several things (e.g. my Program Logic Controller settings, which is suddenly unable to resolve my “NIGHT” trigger), but I’ll address those later on the new VeraPlus, eventually.
The article warns that the copying of the Zwave settings from old to knew can “take some time”. In my case (about 100 devices in my Vera3), it took about 20 minutes. Be patient.
After the Zwave copy from Vera3 to VeraPlus, the Devices in the VeraPlus were “mostly” OK. But quite a lot of the dimmable lights just had numbers instead of their original names. And all of the battery powered devices were missing configuration. (The instructions warn that they need to be “waked up”, but I didn’t bother … I’ll fix them later.)
After the restore of the backup file from Vera3 to VeraPlus, the “dimmable light #s” became properly named as they were originally. It all looks pretty good – apart from some of the battery powered devices and a few broken PLC devices. I’m going to spend a little time getting everything squeaky-clean and make sure everything is working well before continuing with the setup of the new blinds. More news as it happens…
Greg
[quote=“gregreid, post:23, topic:192780”]My new VeraPlus arrived an hour ago from Amazon. Some initial notes on the Vera3 (using UI5 firmware) to VeraPlus (using UI7) upgrade:
Greg[/quote]
Please delete your post and move it to the proper forum section (Upgrading)… http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php?board=32.0
Where do you find the Bali Autoview motors that are compatible with zwave plus. I have been to the Lowes and Bali sites and I only see the motors that require the RTS1 interface.
Where do you find the Bali Autoview motors that are compatible with zwave plus. I have been to the Lowes and Bali sites and I only see the motors that require the RTS1 interface. Re
I ordered mine about a month ago from blinds.com … on the final day of a “buy one get one free” deal. In talking to the blinds.com sales guy (who was excellent), I asked him about also buying a zrtsi device from them. He thought, and then confirmed with his supervisor, that the newest AutoView powered blinds use Zwave+ directly. And he was right! I was able to pair them with my VeraPlus no problem.
The factory-supplied Bali individual blind controllers are also Zwave+. As is the optional single-channel remote (that can control a set of several blinds, e.g. three in a bay window, with one control). It was a real pain to figure out the process to get these controllers working again. But I’ve fumbled through the process with one set of four blinds (Florida room) with everything working great. I documented my steps as I did them (with lots of backing up and starting over) and will test my own steps with a second set of 3 blinds (Dining room bay window) tonight, tweaking my documented steps as may be necessary. And then I’ll use those instructions to do the third and final set of 3 blinds (Living room bay window) tomorrow to confirm everything works as documented. And then, finally, I’ll publish that step-by-step here.
Greg
P.S. I wasted considerable time with getting the beta-test Vera voice control set up (via an Amazon Echo “Alexa” skill). It’s now working but is very slow … like 5 seconds elapsed between “Alexa, set florida room blinds to 50 percent” and any movement. OTOH, my original setup for my old Vera3 voice controlled devices, using the amazon-echo-ha-bridge (a Philips Hue Hub emulator from GitHub) accomplishes the same thing in a half-second. So I’m giving up on Vera voice control for now and will continue to use the emulator setup (a Java webapp running on my NAS). That’s a story for another day too.
[quote=“gregreid, post:26, topic:192780”]
Where do you find the Bali Autoview motors that are compatible with zwave plus. I have been to the Lowes and Bali sites and I only see the motors that require the RTS1 interface.
Re
I ordered mine about a month ago from blinds.com … on the final day of a “buy one get one free” deal. In talking to the blinds.com sales guy (who was excellent), I asked him about also buying a zrtsi device from them. He thought, and then confirmed with his supervisor, that the newest AutoView powered blinds use Zwave+ directly. And he was right! I was able to pair them with my VeraPlus no problem.
The factory-supplied Bali individual blind controllers are also Zwave+. As is the optional single-channel remote (that can control a set of several blinds, e.g. three in a bay window, with one control). It was a real pain to figure out the process to get these controllers working again. But I’ve fumbled through the process with one set of four blinds (Florida room) with everything working great. I documented my steps as I did them (with lots of backing up and starting over) and will test my own steps with a second set of 3 blinds (Dining room bay window) tonight, tweaking my documented steps as may be necessary. And then I’ll use those instructions to do the third and final set of 3 blinds (Living room bay window) tomorrow to confirm everything works as documented. And then, finally, I’ll publish that step-by-step here.
Greg
P.S. I wasted considerable time with getting the beta-test Vera voice control set up (via an Amazon Echo “Alexa” skill). It’s now working but is very slow … like 5 seconds elapsed between “Alexa, set florida room blinds to 50 percent” and any movement. OTOH, my original setup for my old Vera3 voice controlled devices, using the amazon-echo-ha-bridge (a Philips Hue Hub emulator from GitHub) accomplishes the same thing in a half-second. So I’m giving up on Vera voice control for now and will continue to use the emulator setup (a Java webapp running on my NAS). That’s a story for another day too.[/quote]
Sounds promising. I’ve been waiting on direct Zwave control so I may jump in when Home Depot or Lowes has thier 30% off… or if Blinds.com has their BoGo sale again. I have 16 windows (or more) to cover so cost is an issue.
[quote=“gregreid, post:22, topic:192780”]I received 10 of the new AutoView Z-wave+ motors from Bali. …
I’ll follow up with any news/tips once I’m done.[/quote]
OK, I’m finally ready to “publish” my step-by-step procedure to getting my ten new Bali AutoView blinds set up and working with my VeraPlus – as well as with their original unique blind controls and the optional Single-channel remote controls. Since my earlier posting, I’ve had lots of VeraPlus issues unrelated to the blinds. Everything is sorted out now, and I can control all of my blinds using Vera automation, by voice control through Alexa, and by their original remotes.
I’ve uploaded a PDF file of the step-by-step procedure to Google Drive area. You can access it here:
[url=https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwUTizRM0r3TWHIxZjJZWDg5ck0]https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwUTizRM0r3TWHIxZjJZWDg5ck0[/url]
I hope that it’s useful to others. It’s been an “adventure” getting through it all, but the procedure does work (for me at least).
Greg
Interested in your feedback on the single channel remote… They told me that is the only way to control multiple shades without a hub?
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G935A using Tapatalk
If you want to control multiple AutoView blinds with a remote control device, then yes, you can use a single-channel remote paired to multiple blind sets (as I’ve done), AND/OR
Once you get your blinds controllable by Vera, you could use any ZWave remote (including the standard GE one, or one of the individual blind ones that come with your AutoView blinds) to trigger a scene that would operate the blinds together, AND/OR
Use Alexa with the ha-bridge (or Vera’s beta Alexa voice skill) voice control to trigger a scene to do likewise (as I’ve also done). There’s really no need to pay the extra for a single-channel remote, apart from some minor convenience.
Edited to add:
I should point out that the Bali single-channel remotes have an Up, Down, and a Home button, whreeas the individual blind remotes only have Up and Down. The Home button is pretty useful, as I typically have my blinds in “Home” mode (50% down by default, but you can program a different Home setting in the blind).
Also note that the Bali remotes normally operate the blinds directly. They don’t contact your Vera hub to tell it do control the blinds … unless you programmed scenes in Vera to work that way. So the remotes will work out of range of the Vera hub, or even if the hub is down, as long as they’re in range of the blinds.
My blinds came (from blinds.com) with little square plastic “tabs” and screws and anchors to attach the tabs to a wall. The remotes then slip onto those tabs (but are easily removable if you want). I’ve mounted my individual blind controls side-by-side on a wall fairly to the blinds that they control, so they’re always available for individual blind control. I’ve mounted my three single-channel remotes (one controls four Florida-room blinds; one controls three Dining-room blinds, and one controls three Living-room blinds) side by side on the wall in a main room where I can see all of the blinds from that central point. And then of course I also have the option of “Alexa, turn on dining room blinds halfway” voice control, for example. And I have six Alexa devices around my house, so one is always within “earshot”.
awesome info, thank you!
I wish the single channel remotes had multiple presets/buttons and you could pair each preset with different set of shades. I have a room with 2 + 4 + 3 … all within the same viewing area but want them controllable together and each set separately. Looks like I’ll mount an old android phone/tablet to the wall for ease of use and guests.
How do you like the shades? Quiet? Smooth? Syncronize properly? etc
They’re not terribly quiet, but not noisy or bothersome. You certainly hear them when operating, but you can easily carry on a conversation at a normal level.
They’re smooth operating, and have a nice feature where the motors turn off about a second before the final position they’ve been commanded to, allowing their kinetic energy to finish the last few rotations. Quite slick.
From the factory, their “Up” limit is set to a nice tight (but not overly tight!) compression of the cells flat, and the “Down” limit is set to exactly the length that you specified when ordering. I found that spot-on; the bottom of the blind just barely rests on the bottom sill, and touches it gently (no sound). The “Home” setting is exactly 50% of their “Up” and “Down” limits by default. Everything is programmable if not quite right for your needs. When I command all three blinds of the Living Room bay window set to “Home”, they all look nice and parallel across the three windows.
I have just one blind (of ten) that hangs a little further down on the right than on the left. It’s a small flaw, but noticeable. I have a request in for warranty repair/replacement on that one.
When you use the single-channel remote or a Vera scene to signal all blinds in a set to do something (up/down/home), they don’t necessarily all move at once. Sometimes they do, but there’s often a lag between the signals reaching the binds to start their movement. So it’s not always as pretty as you’d like to see, i.e. all moving in unison. But no biggie.
Rarely, one blind might miss the signal altogether, so you have to wait for the other blinds to complete their movement and then re-send the command to get the final blind to move. This doesn’t happen often enough to be a real problem.
The blinds themselves are very good looking. I ordered the double-cell “Daybreak Piazza 3410” for all ten, and love it. They let a little filtered light through, but are completely opaque from the outside. The hardware is top-notch. The dimensions were spot-on to what I ordered, and so their installation was fast and simple.
One minor but “shouldn’t happen” inconvenience is that the batteries in the remotes were under 50% full charge, as received from the factory. Once I got them hooked up to Vera, you can see their battery charge indicator, and they were all in the 7% to 50% range. Most were in the 20-40% range, so I had to spend another $20 for 20 new batteries ([url=https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MBOK79C]Amazon.com).
I ran hard-wiring to each of my blinds, using a 20A 12VDC switching power supply in my attic ([url=https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007K2H0GI]Amazon.com), and micro-USB cables ([url=https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01NAG0YPD]Amazon.com). I cut off the “big end” and used the red and black power wires only. This gave a nice and neat appearance, and I don’t have to worry about replacing batteries. But it was a major hassle during the ordering process to be “permitted” to NOT order any power supply (no wall warts; no battery pack) with the blinds. They insist on ordering their $49 wall-warts, even if I was just going to throw them out. It took several calls and supervisor involvement before it was "OK"d to ship without any power supplies. As such, they all came with a “Custom order” designation, which adds some restrictions on my return/replace options. Ridiculous, I know.
Greg
@gregreid
I’m interested in your last paragraph - you hard-wired your windows for low voltage power. How did you know these Autoview motors are 12V and not 24V?
They’re not terribly quiet, but not noisy or bothersome. You certainly hear them when operating, but you can easily carry on a conversation at a normal level.
They’re smooth operating, and have a nice feature where the motors turn off about a second before the final position they’ve been commanded to, allowing their kinetic energy to finish the last few rotations. Quite slick.
From the factory, their “Up” limit is set to a nice tight (but not overly tight!) compression of the cells flat, and the “Down” limit is set to exactly the length that you specified when ordering. I found that spot-on; the bottom of the blind just barely rests on the bottom sill, and touches it gently (no sound). The “Home” setting is exactly 50% of their “Up” and “Down” limits by default. Everything is programmable if not quite right for your needs. When I command all three blinds of the Living Room bay window set to “Home”, they all look nice and parallel across the three windows.
I have just one blind (of ten) that hangs a little further down on the right than on the left. It’s a small flaw, but noticeable. I have a request in for warranty repair/replacement on that one.
When you use the single-channel remote or a Vera scene to signal all blinds in a set to do something (up/down/home), they don’t necessarily all move at once. Sometimes they do, but there’s often a lag between the signals reaching the binds to start their movement. So it’s not always as pretty as you’d like to see, i.e. all moving in unison. But no biggie.
Rarely, one blind might miss the signal altogether, so you have to wait for the other blinds to complete their movement and then re-send the command to get the final blind to move. This doesn’t happen often enough to be a real problem.
The blinds themselves are very good looking. I ordered the double-cell “Daybreak Piazza 3410” for all ten, and love it. They let a little filtered light through, but are completely opaque from the outside. The hardware is top-notch. The dimensions were spot-on to what I ordered, and so their installation was fast and simple.
One minor but “shouldn’t happen” inconvenience is that the batteries in the remotes were under 50% full charge, as received from the factory. Once I got them hooked up to Vera, you can see their battery charge indicator, and they were all in the 7% to 50% range. Most were in the 20-40% range, so I had to spend another $20 for 20 new batteries ([url=https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MBOK79C]Amazon.com).
I ran hard-wiring to each of my blinds, using a 20A 12VDC switching power supply in my attic ([url=https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007K2H0GI]Amazon.com), and micro-USB cables ([url=https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01NAG0YPD]Amazon.com). I cut off the “big end” and used the red and black power wires only. This gave a nice and neat appearance, and I don’t have to worry about replacing batteries. But it was a major hassle during the ordering process to be “permitted” to NOT order any power supply (no wall warts; no battery pack) with the blinds. They insist on ordering their $49 wall-warts, even if I was just going to throw them out. It took several calls and supervisor involvement before it was "OK"d to ship without any power supplies. As such, they all came with a “Custom order” designation, which adds some restrictions on my return/replace options. Ridiculous, I know.
Greg[/quote]
I am almost ready to order. Just to clarify, a lot of times you used the word “blinds”, but then you said your bought “double cell daybreak piazza 3410” from blinds.com which is a cellular shade not blinds.
Whoops, sorry. You’re right: I have cellular shades, not blinds.
And since my post, I’ve ordered and installed (hard-wired with wiring through the ceiling and attic) nine more. All used every day (automated with Vera) and all working great.
Note that Blinds.com often runs “buy one, get one at xx% off” promotions. You’ll want to wait for one of those. They’re often “buy one get one at 30% off”, but I’ve seen them go to 40% and 50% and I think even once at 60% off for the second shade.
Finally, as I re-read my original post from months ago, I saw that I talked about one shade whose bottom hung a little lower on one side than the other. The factory got back to me about that with instructions on how to fix it. Pretty easy: take off one end cap from the bottom rail, which then allows you to slide out the thin metal cover over that rail, which gives you access to where the strings/cords are tied inside there – using a neat plastic gizmo that allows you to easily un-tie, adjust length and re-tie the chords to make them hang evenly. Took about 15 minutes to make the minor adjustment.
[quote=“gregreid, post:35, topic:192780”]Whoops, sorry. You’re right: I have cellular shades, not blinds.
And since my post, I’ve ordered and installed (hard-wired with wiring through the ceiling and attic) nine more. All used every day (automated with Vera) and all working great.
Note that Blinds.com often runs “buy one, get one at xx% off” promotions. You’ll want to wait for one of those. They’re often “buy one get one at 30% off”, but I’ve seen them go to 40% and 50% and I think even once at 60% off for the second shade.
Finally, as I re-read my original post from months ago, I saw that I talked about one shade whose bottom hung a little lower on one side than the other. The factory got back to me about that with instructions on how to fix it. Pretty easy: take off one end cap from the bottom rail, which then allows you to slide out the thin metal cover over that rail, which gives you access to where the strings/cords are tied inside there – using a neat plastic gizmo that allows you to easily un-tie, adjust length and re-tie the chords to make them hang evenly. Took about 15 minutes to make the minor adjustment.[/quote]
No need to apologize. I am just not too clear and correct me if I am wrong, the AutoView feature only apply to shades and not blinds right? When I tried to customize my purchase (didnt buy yet), the bali blinds has no option for autoview; it only has an option for motorized tilt. I want to know if this motorized tilt for blinds is also zwave plus and will it also work for vera edge? thanks.
For those of you using the RTS, how are you able to set the blinds to 25%, 50%, 75% without feedback?
I thought I had gotten Z-wave blinds but just found out they were all RF
For those of you using the RTS, how are you able to set the blinds to 25%, 50%, 75% without feedback?
I thought I had gotten Z-wave blinds but just found out they were all RF[/quote]
Only way to do this is to start and stop by time which is not super reliable. For blinds I am able to set 3 fixed positions (up, down, favorite) on the tilt but can only do time based on the shades.
Back in July before I fished up this Room remodel I took a few videos to show the Bali Autoview Z-wave plus in action.
and
I also have a bunch of pictures here on dropbox.
Battery life has been better then I thought (or not working) still showing 100% with about 1 open and close per day since July.
If you want to control multiple AutoView blinds with a remote control device, then yes, you can use a single-channel remote paired to multiple blind sets (as I’ve done), AND/OR
Once you get your blinds controllable by Vera, you could use any ZWave remote (including the standard GE one, or one of the individual blind ones that come with your AutoView blinds) to trigger a scene that would operate the blinds together, AND/OR
Use Alexa with the ha-bridge (or Vera’s beta Alexa voice skill) voice control to trigger a scene to do likewise (as I’ve also done). There’s really no need to pay the extra for a single-channel remote, apart from some minor convenience.
Edited to add:
I should point out that the Bali single-channel remotes have an Up, Down, and a Home button, whreeas the individual blind remotes only have Up and Down. The Home button is pretty useful, as I typically have my blinds in “Home” mode (50% down by default, but you can program a different Home setting in the blind).
Also note that the Bali remotes normally operate the blinds directly. They don’t contact your Vera hub to tell it do control the blinds … unless you programmed scenes in Vera to work that way. So the remotes will work out of range of the Vera hub, or even if the hub is down, as long as they’re in range of the blinds.
My blinds came (from blinds.com) with little square plastic “tabs” and screws and anchors to attach the tabs to a wall. The remotes then slip onto those tabs (but are easily removable if you want). I’ve mounted my individual blind controls side-by-side on a wall fairly to the blinds that they control, so they’re always available for individual blind control. I’ve mounted my three single-channel remotes (one controls four Florida-room blinds; one controls three Dining-room blinds, and one controls three Living-room blinds) side by side on the wall in a main room where I can see all of the blinds from that central point. And then of course I also have the option of “Alexa, turn on dining room blinds halfway” voice control, for example. And I have six Alexa devices around my house, so one is always within “earshot”.[/quote]
Pardon me if this is not the right thread; got my first bali shade autoview and paired to vera successfully. Alexa is unable to discover the shade. Vera can open/close the shade. any suggestion please.
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