Great job! I bet so many of us (self included) had this nagging need to do this, but you actually followed through. Kudos!
I had thought of this many times, but automating stuff around the house always hits a wall of "do I really want to have less reasons to stand up from my computer?".
I've had the opposite thought. If I had these blinds I'd set them to open around the time to when I want to wake up. The light would tell my body it's time to get up and I'd wake up earlier and possibly more awake. At least that's the hope. Vs now, my blinds are closed for privacy, the room is dark in the morning, dark rooms make me sleep longer.
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…
SOUTH (or NORTH) is doing a lot of the heavy lifting there!
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).
I think you should read it as "even with unpainted wooden blinds". The right paint should indeed be better.
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…
RE ".....if the particulate level gets high when cooking ....." What is the particale counter level you use ? The number ? Just curious.
If over 100 ug/m3 for 2 minutes, turn on, if under 10 for 10, turn off. If someone's cooking, there is a very predictable spike that peaks in the low hundreds and then decays (super-) exponentially. It was surprising to see how long it takes to get back to ambient. I think you'd have to cook a steak with the stove extractor off to hit 1000 and our hard-wired smoke alarm would definitely be going off. I have no idea how absolutely accurate the SEN55 is, but the background level is usually below 5. I don't live in a particularly polluted place, so that seems reasonable. NOx is almost always zero.
I really wish there was a way to implement something like this for my skylight blinds. So far I haven't found anything which wouldn't need throwing away existing blinds and/or other expensive montage.
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!
Don't they damage the underlying brick work or other stuff? I think I've heard something like that before.
This comment also makes no sense... they said completely black out a room, which blinds alone cannot do.
Yes they can, the thing you're looking for is literally called black-out blinds. Installed properly, they don't let any light in even when it's high noon outside.
I was not referring to specialized black-out blinds, just regular blinds.
My own scoreboard is how little i think of it. An automated porch light that hasn’t been touched in 10years and blinds that had the schedule setup once and forgotten about for 5 years are examples of fantastic automation.
Same. Replacing all of my light switches with an app I have to use anytime I want to turn the lights on or off is indeed a huge step backwards IMHO. Replacing all of the light switches with smart switches and monition sensors and things like this, plus automated schedules, to the point that you never need to switch any switches at all or think about lights, that is nice IMHO.
My lights are like this, I have a remote placed on top of each traditional switch. I never use the remotes, because most of it is automatic (e.g., dim lights for movies, turn off lights when we leave, turn on lights when we come home). Actually I do use my phone to switch to the "put child to bed" lighting.
What are the child safety considerations to be careful of, with blinds, and with openers? (I recall seeing warning stickers and design changes on ordinary miniblinds. I suspect that one of the changes involved having multiple pull cords be separate and loose, rather than a fastened together or a single looped cord. But I'd guess that's not the only safety design decision.)
I think the principle two things are “they can’t pull it off the wall and onto themselves” and “they can’t hang themselves”. With automatic openers you add “they can’t get snarled up/lose a finger in the mechanism” and “they can’t electrocute themselves”. I went extremely belt and braces with our blind opener - but it is toddler proof. Attached the lower end of the cord to the ceiling, attached a pulley that hangs on…
> 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).
I think you should read it as "even with unpainted wooden blinds". The right paint should indeed be better.