Thanks for coming back to me so quickly.
I have very user friendly smart home systems. Alexa, Philips Hue, Nest Thermostat, Nest Cam.
Nothing really to set up with those. I don't have any experience with Arduino Or Rasberry Pi, although I have heard of them.
I was hoping I might be able to do something with Lightwave RF or Wemo, they look like they look fairly user friendly.
I'll have a read about the ESP8266 and Arduino etc and see how I get on. Thank you fir your help and pointing me towards something.
With a little knowledge/research, it's something you could set up for just a few pounds.
You'd need:
Wemos D1 mini (an ESP8266 board, best bought directly from the Wemos store on AliExpress)
A dual 5v relay (eBay)
A USB power supply to power the ESP8266 (it uses tiny amounts of power, so an old phone charger or a Poundland one is fine)
An RJ11 cable to connect to the curtain rail as described in the earlier posts
Using a slightly modified version of the code that is in that previous link I posted, you'd have the ESP8266 imitating a Wemo switch that Alexa can talk to directly. The ESP8266 would then react to the messages sent to it from Alexa by activating one of the two relays to either open or close the curtains.
If that all sounds a bit intimidating, feel free to ignore! If you want any more help, I'll be happy to expand.
Thanks again for your help. Really appreciate it.
I've ordered the ESP8266 from AliExpress. I can sort USB power, I can sort the cable too.
Would you mind pointing me towards a dual relay on eBay please? Loads came up when I searched it. Wasn't sure which one was best for the job.
Whilst I'm waiting for the bits, I'll get reading and try and learn as much as possible.
Will I need connectors/pins/terminals?
Thanks.
This is the sort of relay I've used in the past - 2 Channel 5V Relay Module Optocoupler Protection Power Supply Arduino PIC DSP| eBay
I'd start with the above, but if you wanted to get a bit more clever and make a small circuit board to control the curtains, you could use 5v reed relays like this - RELAY, REED, SIP, SPST, 5VDC, DIODE - COTO TECHNOLOGY | CPC
Are you handy with a soldering iron? The ESP8266 boards usually come with header pins that will need soldering to the board. The cables that then connect the headers from your board to the headers on the relay are known as DuPont cables - 10/20/40 pcs Breadboard Dupont Jump Wire M-M/M-F/F-F 10/20cm Jumper Cable Lead| eBay
Learning how to write a simple bit of code to control one of these boards is relatively easy. Following other people's worked examples is the most obvious way to understand what's going on. This guy's videos will give you an idea of the basics and beyond -
Having said that, you won't need a deep understanding of programming to get your ESP8266 doing what you need, it'll just be a case of adapting someone else's code and I'm happy to help with that (I'm no expert!).
I have these curtains.I'm controlling them from a raspberry pi with one of those cheap (£1) 433Mhz transmitter boards.No connection to the curtains required.The Rapsberry Pi is currently sitting about 3 or 4 meters from the motor end of the curtains.
I've currently got them opening at 7:30 am and closing a sunset.
Hi, any chance you can provide us with a few more details on how this is set up?
Sure,It'll be the weekend before I can put the code up on github and provide a wiring diagram.
As a head start or anyone wanting to roll there own:
For hardware I'm using a raspberry pi and a 433mhz transmitter and receiver boards.These boards are probably all the same.I bought mine from here : https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01EZQLN1E/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I'll try and add wiring diagram/pin out over the weekend.
For the software, I started trying to use the existing RCSwitch / RFSniffer code here : 433Utils/RPi_utils at master · ninjablocks/433Utils · GitHub
But I couldn't get this to work straight out of the box.As a programmer, I took a brief look at the code and then wrote my own.(Doh ! programmers!).I'll try to put that up on github over the weekend too.I wrote it in c11 so it probably wont compile for wemos as is.The transmit code is simple to port over.It's the receiving/learning code to extract the codes for each button that will be a pain.
For anyone wanting to roll there own or update the rcswitch code to handle silent gliss, these are the specification.
433Mhz uses on off keying. There is usually with a sync bit followed by a number of data bits.
For the curtains I found the following timings.
// Sync bit followed by 64 data bits
// Sync bit : 5200uS on, 600uS off
// Data bits 0 = 600uS on, 200uS off
// Data bits 1 = 200uS on, 600uS off
More at the weekend.
Very kind of you, ZincPete, I look forward to the rest.
you can use a broadlink rm pro (£29.99) to learn the rf signal,and then use tasker to emulate Philips hue lights. Paul Hibbert on YouTube has plenty of tutorials that might help
I was unable to get my Broadlink RM Pro to learn this signal, although it has worked for other 433MHz devices. It looks like sending the signal might be relatively straightforward. Learning what to send seems to be the tricky part.