I love the choice of enclose.
$30 Homebrew Automated Blinds Opener (2024)
31–40 of 155 posts
Re: $30 Homebrew Automated Blinds Opener (2024)
#32Fwiw automated blinds in the bedroom are a 100% no brainer benefit. It's wonderful and better than an alarm clock with 0 mental load (set the times to open close across the week once and then never think about them again, you can keep the weekend manual if you like). As in a lot of home automation actually makes things worse. Replacing a convenient light switch with an app? 100% terrible idea and actually makes thing…
My blinds don’t work as an alarm clock for me at all. I sleep with a pillow over my eyes, no amount of light is going to wake me up.
Re: $30 Homebrew Automated Blinds Opener (2024)
#33Fwiw automated blinds in the bedroom are a 100% no brainer benefit. It's wonderful and better than an alarm clock with 0 mental load (set the times to open close across the week once and then never think about them again, you can keep the weekend manual if you like). As in a lot of home automation actually makes things worse. Replacing a convenient light switch with an app? 100% terrible idea and actually makes thing…
You are making assumption I want to wake up that early. Quite opposite - I’m searching for way to completely black out the room since kids will wake up with slightest shred of light, far before daycare starts. And I’m not even living if far lats. But yeah I still want them for convenience. Problem is I don’t want cables dangling around curtains and battery options are limited.
This comment makes no sense. You choose when you want your automated blinds to open, if you don't want to wake up early, just don't set them to open early?
Re: $30 Homebrew Automated Blinds Opener (2024)
#34Fwiw automated blinds in the bedroom are a 100% no brainer benefit. It's wonderful and better than an alarm clock with 0 mental load (set the times to open close across the week once and then never think about them again, you can keep the weekend manual if you like). As in a lot of home automation actually makes things worse. Replacing a convenient light switch with an app? 100% terrible idea and actually makes thing…
My blinds don’t work as an alarm clock for me at all. I sleep with a pillow over my eyes, no amount of light is going to wake me up.
That'll just make it too easy for an assassin.
Re: $30 Homebrew Automated Blinds Opener (2024)
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Motor current is a workable, but generally unsatisfactory, proxy for torque when using heavily geared motors. Far better to measure output torque directly if you can, which is what's being done here using what is essentially a series elastic mechanism (itself a very common way of implementing torque sensing). To elaborate more, current sensing is only "better" in an ease-of-implementation sense, in that a lot of moto…
Motor current is an excellent way to measure torque and is what is done in real-world settings all the time. As a hobbyist you might have to settle for relative torque if you aren't in a position to characterize a motor or you don't have manufacturer's data for it.
There was a news story few days ago that Sony is launching an Ethernet controlled smart motor with integral reducer for robotics applications, and it has encoders on both sides of the reducer plus torque on output shaft. There's nothing so far on the English side of the public Internet about it, at all.
... so I doubt motor torque be end all be all. Especially when Sony does it like that.
Re: $30 Homebrew Automated Blinds Opener (2024)
#36Fwiw automated blinds in the bedroom are a 100% no brainer benefit. It's wonderful and better than an alarm clock with 0 mental load (set the times to open close across the week once and then never think about them again, you can keep the weekend manual if you like). As in a lot of home automation actually makes things worse. Replacing a convenient light switch with an app? 100% terrible idea and actually makes thing…
My blinds don’t work as an alarm clock for me at all. I sleep with a pillow over my eyes, no amount of light is going to wake me up.
I use a silk sleep mask. They’re incredible. Added benefit is that it helps hold your eyelids closed on days when you’re not very sleepy. It’s also one thing I only do when actually attempting to sleep. I swear I get sleepy the second I feel that super-light tension on my head
Re: $30 Homebrew Automated Blinds Opener (2024)
#37"I doubled up the relays feeding the main motor and the heating coil, which gives a lot more headroom on the amperage"
...That's not how that works. One of the relays is going to close first, and those set of contacts will take all the load. Similarly, one set is going to bear all the drama from breaking the connection (and with the motor, there's inductive kickback.)
The correct way to do this is to look up the motor rating for your relay and then size accordingly, not to do dumb shit like "oh I'll just double up these two relays."
Of course he fucks up and uses a resistor from mains to logic, too. Mains and logic should never, ever, ever come anywhere near each other. They're supposed to be physically isolated on a PCB, cutouts in the board, even.
Don't fuck with mains / appliances / HVAC / household water supply if you don't know what you're doing. This guy has no fucking idea what he's doing, and some winter day he's going to come home to a house that's 100 degrees inside and a flooded first floor (notice he didn't connect the water leak sensor?)
Home insurance is scummy, annoying, difficult and weasely in the best of circumstances. The second they figure out you had some chewing gum and duct tape hodgepodge running your dishwasher and that's what caused the flood, they will not only refuse to pay, they'll cancel your coverage on the spot.
Then you find out the joys of not having home insurance coverage on a house with a mortgage.
Edit: Holy christ I missed this part: "It seemed to be due to the push-on jumper cables either becoming too loose after years of jiggling or perhaps oxidizing and self-insulating a bit."
That is how you start a fire, people.
Re: $30 Homebrew Automated Blinds Opener (2024)
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could we hear more about your home automation stack? I'm looking to get into this myself.
Can't speak for OP, but just get Home Assistant running and play around. It'll work in Docker in anything, but it's a good use for an old Raspberry Pi. There isn't much more of a stack than that, and HA is by far the most polished OSS solution. It's got some sharp edges - every time I've done a major auto-update it's broken something critical. You can run it alongside other controllers like the Hue Bridge, which is n…
Home Assistant is nice for this crowd in that you can actually use a real programming language to do the automations. I went with PyScript but NodeRed is very popular as well. No need for YAML
Re: $30 Homebrew Automated Blinds Opener (2024)
#39Fwiw automated blinds in the bedroom are a 100% no brainer benefit. It's wonderful and better than an alarm clock with 0 mental load (set the times to open close across the week once and then never think about them again, you can keep the weekend manual if you like). As in a lot of home automation actually makes things worse. Replacing a convenient light switch with an app? 100% terrible idea and actually makes thing…
I've got Home Assistant set up and the app on my phone. But the only light switch I have automated is done with a standalone, battery powered timer with a motor to turn a dumb switch on and off. It's on my porch light so it turns on and off without me needing to be home or paying attention. Only have to override it on Halloween and shift it with the seasons.
Re: $30 Homebrew Automated Blinds Opener (2024)
#40Fwiw automated blinds in the bedroom are a 100% no brainer benefit. It's wonderful and better than an alarm clock with 0 mental load (set the times to open close across the week once and then never think about them again, you can keep the weekend manual if you like). As in a lot of home automation actually makes things worse. Replacing a convenient light switch with an app? 100% terrible idea and actually makes thing…
> As in a lot of home automation actually makes things worse. Replacing a convenient light switch with an app? 100% terrible idea and actually makes things inconvenient, don't automate those.
The key to proper home automation is not to destroy the "normal" functions already in place, but to augment them with automation.
Smart switches that do not function without connectivity are not smart. I discourage new implementation of smart-bulbs too as they break the "normal" bulb-switch function. I discourage smart plugs for the same reason. Same thing with valves. Imagine a valve that cannot be turned on or off manually. Horrific.