Home automation is the residential extension of building automation.
It is automation of the home, housework or household activity.
Home automation may include centralized control of lighting, HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning), appliances, security locks of gates and doors and other systems, to provide improved convenience, comfort, energy efficiency and security.
Warning: Working with electricity can result in injury, property damage, or even death if it is not done properly. Please keep this in mind while assisting others. If you are not sure about what you are doing, hire a licensed professional.
My house is unfortunately full of plantation blinds where you use this center stick to open and close the blinds. As you can see, one room alone has 12 points of articulation if I want all the blinds open.
Do we have any creative solutions for a way to move the ce central rod up and down to control the blinds?
What if you built a soffit in that space between the windows running horizontal. You could hide the motors etc in there. Could you then replace the bars on the windows with hollowed tubes to hide the cords and allow secure anchoring.
A hobbyist servo motor and ESPHome. Nothing off the shelf at the moment
A switchbot would probably work
Amazon has them…
Perhaps something similar to SwitchBot Blind Tilt...
Move?
Every time I have to use my hands (daily) to open the internal blind on my patio door (adjust tilt then raise/lower blind) I wonder if a worm drive alongside the magnetic knob used to control them would be powerful enough to automate them.
Not sure a worm drive would help you here, but your post reminded me of my own window blind application.
For yours, since the only thing connecting each slat is that center stick, I can only imagine something attached to it ... times 12 (or only 4 or 8 if the rods stacked atop each other were connected into one longer rod).
Maybe attach a string to the top and bottom of that rod then hide a stepper motor inside the top and bottom of the blind that would pull it up or down ... but then, of course, you have to get power to all of them, too.
For me, I've considered leaving the existing blinds open and installing an automated roller blind over the entire window. That's probably not the solution you want here, but just an idea.
EDIT: check out this comment from an older post.
There is an ever growing discussion about this topic on the HA Community that I've been following:
https://community.home-assistant.io/t/smartening-plantation-shutters/363973/
Maybe some Lego Technics!
