Hunter Douglas Motor Control

Hello everyone,

I'm a new user of Indigo, but I've been using Insteon products for years. I'm excited to get everything setup on Indigo.

I am looking to purchase Hunter Douglas Architella Duette Duolite shades (cellular shades). You can find an image of them here: http://leeblinds.com/images/615_Hunter_ ... room_5.jpg

They are top-down, bottom-up shades, but there is one more great feature. They are actually 2 shades in one. One fabric is made on the top half, and another is made on the bottom half. This allows you to mix/blend the fabrics by raising or lowering the middle point to control light.

I am looking to purchase Hunter Douglas' motorized option, but I am unsure of the best way to integrate this with Indigo. Keep in mind I have to be able to perform the top-down, bottom-up, and blend functions to completely control the shades.

Has anyone integrated HD shades with Indigo before, and if so, how? Did you use RS232, RF, IR, or dry contact closures?

The HD Platinum gateway has an RS232 interface and IP control that would allow me to connect the shades to a home automation controller. Do I connect directly to my Mac running Indigo using a USB-to-serial converter, or are there other hardware options?

I would be extremely grateful to anyone who could point me in the right direction.

Many thanks,
Luke

[jay (support)]

Unfortunately, we don't know anything about those shades, though they sound really nice. Maybe someone else has any ideas?

Actually, there is an RS232 port on the Hunter Douglas Platinum Gateway controller intended for HA integration. It will accept serial strings from a HA system. What is the best way to control a serial device from Indigo? If I can send serial strings, I'll be able to control it. I read a little bit about the iTach devices. Is that the best route?

[jay (support)]

Well, it depends. If it's easy to get a serial cable from the Mac to the controller then you don't need the iTach. If, however, you need to use the network in-between then you'd need something like an iTach in the loop.

i was also curious about Hunter Douglas automation and the new gateway. do you have any evidence that this product actually exists? do you know of any suppliers who are selling it?

i posted a question about this a few months back and never got any followup.

thus far in my house, i use mostly Somfy controls with shades made by Bali and other sub-brands of the Springs Window Fashions conglomerate - available thru costco and numerous other resellers. Somfy motors and controls are decent and provide pretty good opportunities for integration with Home Automation (see other threads discussing ZRTSI somfy-zwave interface, for example).

however, bali lacks specialized solutions like the ones you mention from Hunter Douglas such as "duolite" and bottom-up shades, so there are a few places in my house where i would consider using Hunter Douglas. a big issue with Hunter Douglas is that they've rolled up all of their relationships with internet vendors, so AFAIK, you can only buy from dedicated HD dealers now.

http://elec-solutions.com/ is a Hunter Douglas Company (whatever that means) and they provide a host of blind controllers (that recognise when the blind is up and down etc).

Not sure how this fits with the other controllers you mention but I just stated a plugin for their RQ Bridge which converts RS232 IO to their protocol (RQ) .

interesting, but aside from the fact that they are owned by hunter douglas, i don’t see much connection to mainstream HD products. my shades utilize the hunter douglas RF protocol they call “Platinum RF”.

the elec-solutions page seems to have solutions if you want to roll your own solution with motors and controls, but afaik, offers nothing that is compatible with the platinum remote-controlled window covering products that hunter douglas sells to consumers.

I have just finished going through all of the logistics with my Hunter Douglas dealer here in Atlanta, Georgia. I will be ordering the Platinum Gateway along with 15 sets of shades (15 motors).

The Platinum gateway communicates with the shades via RF. I will be able to hook into the gateway via a serial connection and send serial strings to set pre-set shade scenes.

I'll be placing the order soon. I plan to use the iTach serial to IP converter. I'll update this thread once I have it all working.

Thanks!

Hello,

I just discovered the Hunter Doulas automation products also and then found this thread to see if Indigo can be used. It has been a whole year since the last post, so any updates in functionality from anyone (especially lukebrannon)?

If not, does anyone recommend another manufacturer that plays well with Indigo? Pella's Insynctive technology is Zigbee based and in theory should work, but what they charge for this feature is almost insulting for the average geek like myself.

i can share the following experiences:

i have one room with hunter douglas (HD) products. unfortunately, these were purchased around 2011 and thus are not their latest generation of control system. i experimented using a plug-in transmitter designed for simple home automation (HA) integration, but it was troublesome and unreliable (and was discontinued, probably for that reason). so as of now, my HD shades are not disconnected from my HA system.

i have had more success using blinds with Somfy motors and controls. Somfy makes motors and control systems used by several other shade manufacturers as well as other products that require similar activation and control (gates, awnings, draperies, roller shutters, etc.). i have had good luck buying window coverings with somfy controls from multiple vendors including Costco, Blinds.com, StevesBlindsAndWallpaper, etc. and from multiple manufacters including Bali and various store brands. My experiences mostly relate to cellular shades, though i think they would also apply if you were looking for tilting blinds, roller shades, or other types. the somfy wireless protocol is called RTS

For control of Somfy and integration with my Indigo-centric HA system, i have tried two approaches: one is to use an I/OLinc module connected to the "somfy dry contact interface" unit sold by smarthome. in essence, this is a somfy wireless transmitter circuit board wired to the i/o linc so as to simulate pressing the UP and DOWN buttons on the remote. it is a one-way communication with indigo - control only, thus it does not sense the position of the blinds, and can not tell if you have operated them using another remote. this solution works well when you have a single group of window coverings you want to control together and you only need to operate them using basic open/close commands (i.e., no intermediate stops). for those applications, i've found this solution works well. it is reliable. if you ONLY control the blinds via this interface, then the lack of two-way communication is not a big drawback, since you can tell the state of devices pretty well simply by knowing the state of the attacked i/olinc. the hardware for this is a slightly janky contraption consisting of an i/olinc, a cable attached to screw terminals on the i/olinc running to an external utility box containing the transmitter. it is somewhat expensive. also, the i/olinc is one of the oldest non-updated-to-dualband-tech insteon devices out there.

A second and slightly more elegant solution to integrate somfy with indigo is via the somfy ZRTSI product. this is a box that plugs into an outlet, it is configured as a z-wave device. it receives z-wave commands and then translates and transmits those commands as RTS to somfy devices. very nice idea. well conceived and well implemented. well-supported in indigo. works well. the only slight complaints about it are a) it is expensive(*) and b) it is still only a one-way control-only system. as for the expense, yes, the device itself is ridiculously priced, but if you have multiple window coverings that you want to control as separate RTS groups, this device can control up to 16 separate groups. obviously it's much cheaper (not to mention more elegant) than purchasing that many separate i/olinc+dry contact interface combos. you have to worry about two wireless range issues: the device must be able to communicate via the z-wave mesh to your indigo server and it must be within range to send RTS commands to all the products you want to control.

are these perfect solutions? no. an ideal solution would work reliably with no extra hardware, would allow shades to be controlled and to report their status back to the controller, and would be reasonable in expense (i say "reasonable" given that wireless shades already in the "extravagant" category anyway).

info in my previous post was based on my last work done on this about a year ago, but i also was just reminded that somfy has a new bridge called "somfy mylink".

this is similar to the ZRTSI interface above. it provides a command bridge to send RTS commands but instead of using Z-wave, it is an IP (Wi-Fi) device. an added benefit is that it can support direct communication with somfy's own smartphone app (dedicated apps being obviously, a big mega-trends in HA and related accessories). so that's nice. another nice thing is that it's not ridiculously expensive (ballpark of $200 vs. $350+ for ZRTSI).

what's less nice about this is that in contrast to the z-wave unit, since they provide their own app, somfy may not be inclined to open up the API for integration with HA systems, or perhaps at least not initially. this is quite similar to the route taken by hunter douglas, with their tightly closed and controlled system, seemingly designed to favor high-priced custom integrators (and not HA hackers and DIY types). it means out-of-the box, unlike ZRTSI, there is no indigo integration available for this device, afaik. another slight drawback is that this can control only 5 separate RTS group s (vs 16 for ZRTSI).

my hope is that someone will get one of these and figure out a way to build an indigo plug-in for it. i had a similar hope for the HD system, but afaik nothing has yet emerged. my bigger long-term hope this that the world will eventually arrive at some universal open standards for all this kind of gear to communicate - perhaps it will be home kit -- i understand the latest rev. of the home kit spec has support for controlling window coverings -- though hopefully with more emphasis on "open" and "universal".