Automated Curtains - ‘Alexa, let in some light’¶

Hey guys, we’re back! Having recently started a new job in the design/prototyping world, my appetite for making has been somewhat satisfied… for about a month that was. I made an easy rule for myself that anything I make outside of work needs to be fun, low-stress, and ideally electronics related. While the work at Laut is awesome, true mechatronics projects will be few and far between. So why not supplement that work while staying fresh on mechatronics? My first forray back was a quick and easy led project to light up my Wizard Staff. Shoutout to my girlfriend Megan buying the staff for me, and then helping me prototype the circuit. She’s officially passed the ‘hello-world’ moment of electronics: making an LED blink.

INSERT WIZARD STAFF

More recently I had a thought that’s been tough to get out of my mind: “wouldn’t it be great if I could open/close my blinds through Alexa?” And here we are. We’re back!

Research¶

Similar Projects¶

Of course, I wasn’t the first to think of this idea! Here are a number of similar projects I’ll be leveraging and learning from along the way.

Nodemcu esp8266 stepper motor NEMA 17 controlled over WiFi

Blinds Control With ESP8266, Google Home and Openhab Integration and Webcontrol

Automatic Window Curtains

Alexa Curtain Control System - 3D Printable and Low Cost

Initial Conception¶

After reviewing these, I’ve gone back and forth a bit on my overall design. My first thought was to try and automate the existing blinds.

Home Sweet Home

Living Room

However, part of the inspiration of the project is the annoyance I feel dealing with these existing blinds. Those in the bedroom are the cheap slatted style you might find in a hotel. Needless to say, they’re just the worst. The ones in the living room are more traditional type of wire-opened blinds. While I had ideas for automating them, the biggest issue for both is that they have 2 functions. Twist the rod to ‘open’ the slats, and a 2nd function to move them out of the way. In other words they had 3 modes. This would not only require a 2nd motor, it would vastly complicate the programming.

Replacing existing blinds¶

Therefore, I needed a blind or curtain with only one function. Open/close. The first that came to mind were the roll-up curtain style blackout blinds. The thinking seemed sound. I could simply hook up a stepper motor to the metal ball-chain and be off to the races, similar to this project. However, I took some measurements of the windows and this type of curtain proved to be prohibitively expensive.

Dimensions

It was at this point that my boss sent me this off-the-shelf-option.

To which I promptly sent him a quickly generated meme.

Drake

While very intriguing, I had my eyes set on a DIY solution by this point. Even still, it planted a seed. Curtains!! Of course, curtains are so much cheaper than roll-up blinds.

After a little more time spent on Amazon then I care to admit, I settled on these curtains, in the natural style. 3 pieces at the 100” x 84” size ought to do it. One in the bedroom and two in the living room, which will need to be hemmed short.

BOM¶

My tentative BOM, which heavily borrows from this project, is as follows.

Last update: November 25, 2022