Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

$30 Homebrew Automated Blinds Opener (2024)

sifter.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 155 posts

Re: $30 Homebrew Automated Blinds Opener (2024)

#111

Post by TimByte »

seanalltogether wrote: post #20
J_Shelby_J wrote: post #8

I just want to share that these are by far the best home automation you can have. I love my smart lights, hacked together smart humidifier, smart fans (the vornado dc fans with outlet switches), intake air pump, and air quality monitoring. But nothing has the quality of life impact of smart blinds. It’s the best, and probably only, way to reliably keep your sleep schedule in sync. Smart lightbulbs - four of the brigh…

Automated blinds can also have a good effect on temperature control. In the summer you can have your south facing blinds automatically close when you leave the house to block out the sun.

Yep, that's a big one. Blinds that respond to sun position or presence can do wonders for keeping indoor temps stable

Re: $30 Homebrew Automated Blinds Opener (2024)

#112

Post by TimByte »

sagarm wrote: post #72
foobarian wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The blinds shown under this article are pretty ordinary vinyl type blinds that leak a ton of light. I wish I could find blinds thick enough to behave like cardboard over windows, that could also be opened on a daily cadence. At this point I gave up on blinds and put a shirt over my eyes to sleep. I thought about just covering the windows permanently but I don't relish that idea.

Get a sleep mask. They're opaque, so they block more light, and they don't cover your nose or mouth. Contoured sleep masks won't interfere with your eyelashes, helping reduce dry eye further.

Yet I found I sleep better when my body wakes up with the light instead of in total darkness until an alarm yanks me out of REM

Re: $30 Homebrew Automated Blinds Opener (2024)

#113

Post by 05 »

TimByte wrote: post #110
J_Shelby_J wrote: post #8

I just want to share that these are by far the best home automation you can have. I love my smart lights, hacked together smart humidifier, smart fans (the vornado dc fans with outlet switches), intake air pump, and air quality monitoring. But nothing has the quality of life impact of smart blinds. It’s the best, and probably only, way to reliably keep your sleep schedule in sync. Smart lightbulbs - four of the brigh…

There's just something about waking up to actual sunlight (even filtered through clouds) that no amount of artificial brightness can replicate. It's like your brain knows the difference.

Indoor lighting is about two orders of magnitude dimmer, you’d need 1kW/m*2 (100W/sqft) to emulate a cloudless day at noon, so 20kW just to light up your living room, not accounting for LED losses.

Re: $30 Homebrew Automated Blinds Opener (2024)

#114

Post by ars »

seanalltogether wrote: post #20
J_Shelby_J wrote: post #8

I just want to share that these are by far the best home automation you can have. I love my smart lights, hacked together smart humidifier, smart fans (the vornado dc fans with outlet switches), intake air pump, and air quality monitoring. But nothing has the quality of life impact of smart blinds. It’s the best, and probably only, way to reliably keep your sleep schedule in sync. Smart lightbulbs - four of the brigh…

Automated blinds can also have a good effect on temperature control. In the summer you can have your south facing blinds automatically close when you leave the house to block out the sun.

I have that, but for my entire house - in the Summer the walls get covered with sun blocking plates, and in the winter the walls are exposed to the rays of the sun.

If you want your own, you can buy it, it's called: Parthenocissus tricuspidata or you can get the Parthenocissus quinquefolia.

It really does work!

Re: $30 Homebrew Automated Blinds Opener (2024)

#115

Post by ars »

danielheath wrote: post #54
ojame wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what country you're from, but "blockout blinds" are likely what you're looking for. They blockout (essentially) all light and are operated like normal blinds.

Have never seen blockout blinds which stop enough light during the day - they leak enough to be comparable to a reading lamp, since outdoors is so bright.

I have that. They have a magnet that keep the middle, where they connect light-tight.

Installation is key - they need to be oversized, covering the entire window AND the trim, and they need to be carefully installed so that they touch the trim.

Re: $30 Homebrew Automated Blinds Opener (2024)

#116

Post by ctxc »

ars wrote: post #114
seanalltogether wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Automated blinds can also have a good effect on temperature control. In the summer you can have your south facing blinds automatically close when you leave the house to block out the sun.

I have that, but for my entire house - in the Summer the walls get covered with sun blocking plates, and in the winter the walls are exposed to the rays of the sun. If you want your own, you can buy it, it's called: Parthenocissus tricuspidata or you can get the Parthenocissus quinquefolia. It really does work!

Spent a minute trying to figure out if I just walked into a botany version of the rickroll xD

Re: $30 Homebrew Automated Blinds Opener (2024)

#117

Post by adrianN »

05 wrote: post #113
TimByte wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's just something about waking up to actual sunlight (even filtered through clouds) that no amount of artificial brightness can replicate. It's like your brain knows the difference.

Indoor lighting is about two orders of magnitude dimmer, you’d need 1kW/m*2 (100W/sqft) to emulate a cloudless day at noon, so 20kW just to light up your living room, not accounting for LED losses.

You can get away with less because a good part of the power is outside the visible range.

Re: $30 Homebrew Automated Blinds Opener (2024)

#118

Post by lm28469 »

aidenn0 wrote: post #84
joezydeco wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you've ever encountered German rolladen you'll forget all about awnings.

Awnings are, IMO strictly better than those: - You never have to move them - In the summer (when the sun is higher) it blocks out lots of sun - In the winter (when the sun is lower) it lets in more sun

With a properly designed house your roof overhangs should already take care of that: https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e5e91c81d669b...

https://www.house-energy.com/images/Overhang.gif

I feel like we design houses like we design cars and many other modern things, form over function and fix the problems by adding a ton of overcomplicated technologies.

If you have huge openings and no overhangs I'd go for something like that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPNMp6pMJjk

Re: $30 Homebrew Automated Blinds Opener (2024)

#119

Post by lm28469 »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #7

Fwiw 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…

> Fwiw automated blinds in the bedroom are a 100% no brainer benefit.

The only problem is finding one that doesn't use undersized plastic gears and cheap electronics that will invariably fail within 10 years. Most of them don't even have manual backups

Re: $30 Homebrew Automated Blinds Opener (2024)

#120

Post by HenryBemis »

bjackman wrote: post #108
Spivak wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So that's a funny thing, your blinds are on the inside of your house so the sun energy is hitting them and dissipating from there. Hopefully your blinds are white and reflecting more of it out than the other surfaces it would otherwise hit. But if you want to make a real temperature difference you need blinds on the other side of the insulated box otherwise known as an awning.

You can 100% achieve a real temperature difference with unpainted wooden internal blinds. I'm sure you can achieve much more with an ideal setup but just sharing from experience, what OP has can easily make a difference of several degrees.

> unpainted wooden

can you please elaborate on this? logic dictates that if you cover the whole thing with plastic (paint) it will affect the performance of the material (I assume reflecting light (paint) vs absorbing light (raw wood).

Post reply on HN