if Apple made window blinds...
(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.)
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 the cord, hung a 1kg weight from it, and used a solenoid from a broken linktap valve to pull a pin that allows the weight to fall and pull the cord.
Even with the blinds open the whole assemblage is entirely out of her reach, and it goes for the opposite effect to the poster’s implementation - blinds slam open in about half a second with a quiet whirr, as I prefer a jarring wakeup, and my wife would sleep through Armageddon. Reset is manual, but that’s fine, closing them is an optional and trivial activity.
Is there a lockout mode for "I/we are not decent" or do the blinds just sort of majestically reveal the bedroom to your backyard/parking lot observers like curtains opening on a feature film?
If the UL devs read this: if you want to cut your AWS bill, perhaps don’t send the images as BMP?
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.
But the blinds, specifically those in your bedroom? Do it! One of those life hacks that's really not that expensive and makes your life better with 0 cognitive load after initial setup.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I've got Zigbee and Wi-Fi/Tasmota outlets running the heating and lighting for my chicken brooders[0], my partner's plant lights, fish tank lights, probably more that I'm forgetting. At our cabin the mountains, an outlet + temperature sensor combined with Home Assistant's Thermostat helper gives us temperature control over an extremely basic window A/C unit and we cast an HA dashboard to a nearby Google Home screen. A smart power strip controls all of our "cabin intra" -- router, cable modem, LTE backup, etc. HA automations monitor them all and restart anything that stops working, and a Tasmota rule ensures that nothing can gets stuck in the Off state due to automation failure or operator error.
I'd love to, actually. But where do I even start? How to choose the solution? I have some old blinds which leak a lot of light and wouldn't mind replacing them. Guess my only hard requirement is for the blinds not to connect to the internet.
It doesn't take that much effort to find smart devices with a manual override button. As for lights, the IKEA ones I have are programmed to turn on after cutting the power regardless of smart setting, so all of my physical light switches still work if my automations fail. Toggling them that way kind of screws up the Zigbee network, but I'm not losing any functionality if the Zigbee controller dies.
As for the blinds, you have to place those strategically. You wouldn't be the first one to come out of bed or out of the shower and surprise flashing your neighbours because the smart blinds opened without you noticing.
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
But this isn’t automating anything, you are still just manually controlling things. I lights in my office automated, so that they do different things based on the time of day, room occupancy, door open or closed, etc. The lights follow circadian rhythm to be cool during the day and warm after dark. When it is close to bedtime, I run one command that changes the behavior of many things in the house, including turning off certain appliances and changing light behaviors. That includes the bedroom only turning on a red light under the bed when the door opens so we can find our way to the bed without waking the other person, and other rooms only turning on a very low level “night light” for moving through the house comfortably for a glass of water or something.
Everything can be overridden with manual input at light switches or app commands, and each behavior will turn off automatic control for a set period so it doesn’t fight me when I set something myself. That is home automation, not being able to turn your living room lights on by yelling at Alexa.
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 brightest you can buy - are nothing compared to a window on a cloudy day.
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 nice to have as a backup (since 90% of what most people connect is smart lighting). Probably the most useful simple automation I have is an motion activated dim light in the bathroom at night, but that's using Hue.
Then look at ESPHome, which is an ecosystem for making your own DIY sensors and controllers that can feed into HA. For example we have a Sensirion air quality sensor that triggers a smart switch connected to a fan if the particulate level gets high when cooking. You can go a very long way with on/off to control non-smart devices, and your sensors don't need to be particularly accurate (like absolute PM2.5) as long as the conditon you trigger on is repeatable.
The only thing to think about is what hardware ecosystem makes sense for you. For example there's at least four different competing standards for connectivity (WiFi, Zigbee, Z-Wave, Matter/Thread, etc). So getting a Zigbee dongle isn't a bad idea because then you can connect any IKEA or Hue device (among others).
AppDaemon[0] runs alongside it and is more "real" Python, it mostly just responds to events sent to it.
NodeRED has a direct integration and is (in my experience) best for complex state machines as you can easily debug them and actually see the logic work.
They also have a REST API to trigger things and a Websocket API if you need more real-time stuff (subscribing to events instead of querying states)
Then there is just straight up MQTT, where you need to do it all yourself.
What HA shines is that it tends to have ready-made community integrations with _everything_. And enough users for each that if something breaks, people will notice and it'll be fixed promptly.
The hue motion sensors pay for themselves pretty quickly.
The rest is zigbee and zwave switches and sensors. You can get cheap ones from ikea. You can get nicer ones from Zooz. I like Apollo for air quality sensors. The humidifier is the German brand Ventura. Zero maintenance. But it’s not smart so I got a power outlet that reports power usage. When it runs out of water the humidifier shuts off and the power goes to zero, so I have an automation that detects that and sends a message via the HA app.
Living in California and having fans move air around from cool rooms to warmer rooms has cut our AC bill significantly as a dc fan is a fraction of power consumption of a whole house AC. And also co2 levels stay much lower. Last week I set up my window fan to blow air in whenever it’s cooler outside then inside.
Then, for the lower floor we accomplish a similar effect with tall, deciduous plantings.
- 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
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
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).
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!
You do need to manage windows and gutters. What you do is pull the vine of off the border of the window and leave it dangling in the air (a little bit of it). This signals to the vine that it reached the end of what it's sitting on, and it will stop growing there. (If you cut it instead, it thinks it has an opportunity.)
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.
I’d recommend a double rod, a blackout curtain on the rod closest to the window, and a “pretty” curtain on the outer rod. Gives you best of both worlds. Functional and pleasing, like at a hotel.
If the fabric itself isn't blocking light... You need better material. I have only ever had problem with light leakage in the edges, not in the fabric material.
I believe 'blackout thermal shades' is what to look for.
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.
I lost it once, and bought two more, so that I would never be without one again. It’s the only sleep mask that works. It stays on all night. It does not leak light around the edges. Everything “shaped like your eyes” is a complete waste of time. This is the correct implementation of sleep mask, and I will never go back.
It’s super comfortable, and even slightly muffles noise since it wraps around your entire head. I do like the effect of good sealing ear plugs (Mack’s 31 Db only), but find them extremely uncomfortable to wear multiple days in a row. I’ll bring the Mack’s on vacation, just in case I am put next to an obnoxious snorer, there is very loud city noise all night, etc.
I don’t have issues sleeping in too late, because I actually get sleep with this thing, and after some time, I was just back on a normal rhythm, very consistently waking up at the same time.
I care deeply about sleep mask. Maybe it won’t work for everyone, but just in case it can help a single person, I am unloading my mask manifesto.
I'm just, you know, sort of neurotic about certain things, and I know I'm not alone here on HN. :)
I use the Nidra ones primarily as I can blink without my eyelashes catching the mask
https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-sleep-mask/
Another wrap around option with audio are the SleepPhones, while not designed to go over your eyes they work well that way and before switching to the Nidra and A20 ear buds that was my primary headset for about a decade.
As to audio specifically, the Anker A20 work well even if you are a side sleeper
https://www.soundcore.com/products/sleep-a20-sleeping-earbud...
Notwithstanding the above, blackout blinds are awesome as long as they extend above and below and past the sides of the window frame. Can be quite low cost from places like Costco.
https://www.amazon.ca/Persilux-Blackout-Cellular-Protection-...
It's a total blackout, though it definitely benefits from the window being deeply inset; on a typical bedroom window at midday I expect a bunch of light would find its way around that.
bedroom is ultra-dark, with just a hint of light.
https://www.ikea.com/ca/en/p/trippevals-blackout-cellular-bl...
So around 470 W/m2 visible radiation.
What I'm surprised at is how rare fake windows/skylights are. I mean, such products/companies exist, but they seem to be relatively niche, and accordingly expensive (as in "call our sales team for pricing" expensive), not really ready for your usual DIY/domestic consumer.
I think what we really need is monitor/TV companies producing low-res, high lumen screens for this purpose, hopefully mass produced. I think Sony has produced a "passive" screen ("the Frame") , that is effectively a matt tv mean to display slow/static images to replace hanging pictures (and even stuffs the electronics in the wall to keep a low profile), but it's still a luxury niche.
I have a ton of sleep problems and just wanna push back here a little... going for a brisk walk in the fresh air and sunshine every day works a lot better for me.
I wish I had time to bike shed like this. Just learning, tinkering, and enjoying life.
Bikeshedding is wasting time on trivial and pointless efforts or discussions. It's a bad thing. :)
After you have electric-controlled rollers, you can control them via any automation you want by installing a "Shelly Plus 2PM" device behind each switch.
I connect the Shellys to home assistant, and from there, trigger all the rollers to go down a certain number of minutes after sunset. They all rise at a certain time in the morning. You can always trigger them manually too, of course. ChatGPT can spit out very complex YAML for HA if you want to make life easier, your only limit is your imagination.
...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.
A little OTT. How do people learn to maintain their house or learn to hack improvements? Should we all have your expertise? Perhaps you think paying a qualified installer would be better?
Any work on your home or car or whatever runs risks. Making mistakes is often an important part of learning (and can be expensive). Being a Swiss watch isn't a good compromise.
It is great that you share your knowledge: good feedback is difficult to get.
You don't when it comes to mains electric. You hire an electrician who learned through study, training and certification rather than just proding things until it either works or kills you.
Play around with low voltage power all you want but leave mains voltage alone.
Yet I'm regularly having to identify and resolve electrical safety issues because other people create risks. Sometimes issues are historical, or have developed over time.
Some of those risks are created by qualified and licensed people.
The most recent: a licensed electrician putting a female supply plug on a friend's bus (I think because he knows houses have female sockets) and then suggesting taking the power supply lead and replacing the female connector with a male one (male to male leads are rather unsafe and illegal for good reason and the friends were skeptical).
I see people that have done the study, training and certification create serious risks. So I don't blindly trust study, training and certification for my safety or safety of those I care for. I do use professionals but I'm very careful when choosing who to trust (for more than just electricity, water and gas).
We learn how to do things correctly because of our own interest in risks. I appreciated the comment because they didn't just say "don't", they also explained the engineering reasons for saying "don't".
However I am a risk-taker, and I take risks that would likely shock you. I am somewhat careful to avoid creating risks for others (when there is a floor level of risk, you can't go below the floor).
It's a balance. The logical conclusion of your world-view is that we shouldn't do anything for ourselves!
Don't fix that leaky tap without training! Too risky. Good example since I lent my pipe wrenches to a friend and told her to have a go at replacing her tap. Very successful. It was outdoors so low risk?
> just proding things until it either works or kills you
I am not suggesting that strawman.
You definitely can. Any residential home in the US was probably built by those who had no formal training on "mains electric" and was inspected by a building inspector who also knows nothing really about electricity, but can follow guidelines.
It isn't difficult to buy devices that are built and rated to interface low voltage with "mains electric".
The issue is when you arrogantly assume you know things you don't, and that can harm you regardless of the application. Yet, that is often a path for some to learn and become experts or cautionary tales.
IMO, the gatekeeping risk-averse shouldn't stand on soap boxes attempting to dictate the lives of the curious.
This is different from what you need to know to do house wiring. That's done by following electrical code, which is basically a distillation of the engineering above into a set of relatively easy-to-follow rules.
Start with low voltage instead of high voltage. Learn how it works. When you know enough that you want to move to high volt, don't start with improv -start with repairing outlets, replacing lights, etc. Things that have good directions, are not made up by you, and you can read and study. Read the relevant electrical code portions when you do it, understand why you have to do things the way it tells you to.
As you get better at it, and understand more and more, sure, branch out into your own stuff. But not until you understand it and can be safe.
Messing with mains when you have no idea what you are doing isn't just dangerous to you. It's dangerous to people around you, to future homeowners, to houses around you, etc.
Mistakes in the field are not meant to be part of the learning process, anymore than they would be in any other hazardous-to-life situation. Sure, they happen, and risks exist, but working on mains and high volt panels in any sane place is learned while you have you have someone overseeing your work and stopping you before the mistake is dangerous. People stop and ask whether what they are about to do is the right thing before they do it, not try it and see if it works.
Otherwise, it's not just money, it's your life, or someone else's life.
As for learning having risks and mistakes sometimes being expensive - sure. But having never dove in a pool, would you think it's a good plan to try to do a triple backflip off a ten meter high dive?
After all, any way you learn to dive runs risks, and making mistakes is often an important part of learning (and can be expensive).
You would instead hopefully start small, work your way up, understand things, and be appropriately fearful of things you should be fearful of.
Beyond that - I don't know why people are so tolerant of this kind of thinking with high voltage stuff.
People seem totally intolerant of it when it comes to natural gas lines, for example. Nobody is out there saying "well you know i just started fucking around with my gas line, added some tees and some relays to control some valves. Sometimes it smells funny but who knows. I wrapped some more tape around it and it seems fine most of the time".
Messing with mains is much more dangerous. Electrical codes are written in blood, the same as all others.
If you want to learn to do home fixing, you learn to be safe first, you start small, and you don't improvise until you can be safe.
Like safety everywhere, it's about understanding, discipline, and process. You can't shortcut it.
Again, not a viable commercial design, but not insane with proper supervision either.
I was curious how you knew about the leak sensor so I did a quick search, and see you're just making things up to complain about -- that model has a turbidity sensor (which I suspect are the NC wires you noticed), but no leak sensor. Oh no! His water might be too turbid! Also the fill valve is wired inline with the float switch (in the machine itself), so it's double-covered for overflow prevention. Flooding seems highly unlikely.
The flaky connections he mentions are the 3 volt ones -- again, not a fire risk. Common for low-voltage contacts like that to get flaky in commercial devices too (e.g., face-plate contacts for thermostats, etc) and without disastrous outcomes. The high-voltage/amperage connections he uses are plugged into the OEM harness, so the same connectors as the OEM motherboard. So, again, seems like you're just making up things to complain about.
I don't want to encourage people to mess with mains power if they're not adequately informed, but it's also not a magical domain you can't learn about with a little research and caution (easier in the US than the UK...). And his gadget worked for years, by the sounds of it, which is better than any commercial appliance I've bought in the last decade...
But I agree he's probably gambling on the home insurance issue, even if his device(s) isn't at fault...
Setup was not straightforward at all, and I have 10 windows, but it was worth it in the end.
You can write automations in YAML (or TypeScript with [1]), and your blinds can also be controllable with Siri or whatever voice assistant you like.
I have consumer model power roller shades. I love them. If you have a room that gets lots of sun / you like the views, being able to hit a button and open it's an amazing quality of life thing.
3d printed gear box with a servo that sits inline with the shaft. Invisible outside of the blinds if you route the cables correctly.
I controll mine with esphome and home assistant rock solid for years
I looked at doing this exact thing and on my blinds there’s plenty of room in the top construction of the blinds to put a servo in there you would never see unless you’re looking for it. The rod itself was even not perfectly round so you could 3d print a shape to go around it very easily. I’m honestly shocked there’s not an aftermarket company already doing this exact thing.
(Linear induction motors were invented for curtains. Really. Kirsch Electrac)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Wheatstone would like a word
allenrb•2mo ago
01100011•2mo ago
cpgxiii•2mo ago
To elaborate more, current sensing is only "better" in an ease-of-implementation sense, in that a lot of motor drivers already have current sensing built in/easily added. For some applications this is good-enough, but in terms of estimating "real number" torque from current, it can take a lot of work to characterize for geared motors.
buescher•2mo ago
cpgxiii•2mo ago
In the robotics world this is sometimes distinguished between actuators that report "effort" (i.e. a current-derived estimate) and actuators that report torque (i.e. actual torque sensing or direct-drive with current sensing). Both can be useful, but "effort" is not torque.
buescher•2mo ago
cpgxiii•2mo ago
As it stands, Universal Robots (and likely their clones) do use current->torque characterization for their actuators (which, amusingly, is then stored on a robot-specific USB drive or SD card), and their torque sensing is shit. Shit enough that for any useful force/torque application you still need a separate force/torque sensor. Schunk, for some of their electric parallel grippers with "force" feedback, only characterizes them at a single velocity and there is significant error in the force estimate at any other speed. Good current->torque characterization of a complete actuator is so difficult that approximately no vendors in the automation space are willing to do it.
Karliss•2mo ago
It's not always question of lot of work for hobbyist, as it is result of using cheap of the shelf parts and modules which are optimized with different goal in mind and give very poor signal to noise ratio. Doesn't matter how much characterization you do if the change in temperature, grease viscosity and distribution, plastic flex produces higher variance in motor load than any force you can apply to final gearbox stage. I guess the more careful choice of suitable combination of parts from more specialized stores can be considered "lot of work for hobbyist" compared to picking first result on amazon or whatever you found in your junk bin so your argument still stands.
Of course high gear ratio or slow speed doesn't always mean inefficient gearboxes. There are solutions for slow rotation with or without high gear ratio which are reasonably efficient thus allowing to use motor current for estimating torque. And any serious or well designed equipment will use them. But that usually means more complex gearbox, motor controller or purpose built electric motors all of which is either more expensive or require high MOQ orders from manufacturers.
numpad0•2mo ago
... so I doubt motor torque be end all be all. Especially when Sony does it like that.