DIY Motorized Shades

Regardless of whether your home has a perspective on the Gulf of Mexico, Sarasota Bay, or you simply appreciate the New York daylight, motorized shades can help supplement your mindset. When deciding on which blinds to buy, the best choice to pick would be the DIY motorized shades. Why, you ask? That’s because DIY motorized shades offer a unique way to provide an elegant new experience to your home. Instead of spending $1000 on branded Motorized Shades, you can make yours at home in so less cost. In this article, we are going to show you the step-by-step method to set your own homemade motorized window shades. So, without further ado, lets set you up some DIY or Homemade Window Shades.

HOW TO SET UP YOUR DIY MOTORIZED SHADES

If you’re trying to set up your own DIY motorized window shades, here’s a list of steps you can follow to ensure you build the perfect ones.

Step 1: Gathering the Required Material

• NodeMCU 1.0 (aka V2) development board
• Motor shield
• Geared stepper motor 28BYJ-48
• Microswitch: Please note that if you want to use the printed electronics box, you need to get these exact switches or same dimension ones. The lid has a socket modeled after this particular switch.
• M3x8 hex socket Allen screws
• MicroUSB-cable for power and programming and any USB phone charger
• 3D printer (or printing service)
• M3 knurled brass inserts M3x5x4
• Roller shade Tupplur compatible with inner radius
• Wires, soldering equipment, and basic skills

The equipment should cost you $15-$20, and the shades would cost an additional $19. You can easily get these supplies from your local hardware store.

Step 2: Connecting the Wires

Firstly, we are going to connect the wires in our homemade window shades. To do this, you have to:

• Wire the motor to the shield as seen in the pictures. As you go, do take notes of the colors used.

• Use the solder to attach cables to the microswitch as seen in the picture. If you can, use red, black and white as in the picture.
• Lastly, attach the button wires to (GPIO) 5.

Step 3: Set Up your MQTT Broker

MQTT is a lightweight tool used to publish protocol suitable for small IoT devices, such as your motorized shades. I’m going to be using a cloud server to connect to the homemade window shades, but you can use a local broker as well.

Setting up a cloud broker:

• Register your shades at CludMQTT: https://www.cloudmqtt.com/
• Create a new broker instance
• Click the instance info and save the info shown on the screen
• To test your device, download MQTT.fx: http://mqttfx.jfx4ee.org/
• Now, add a profile to MQTT.fx with the credentials you saved from the instance info you created.
• Lastly, connect the device. If all goes well, you should be able to connect to your device now.

Step 4: Installing the Software

The NodeMCU development board on the ESP8266 is a single-chip computer with WiFi and I/O capabilities. You can use both Arduino IDE and Lua Interpreter to program the software. In these instructions, I’ve decided to follow the Lua Interpreter.

• Firstly, you’ll need to cook the LUA firmware here: https://nodemcu-build.com/ I would recommend selecting the following modules: GPIO, file, MQTT, node, net, PWM, WiFi, timer, and optionally enable SSL
• You’ll receive an email with the firmware download link, use that to download it. It shouldn’t take too long, it’s a pretty small file.
• Now, download the Flash tools needed: https://github.com/marcelstoer/nodemcu-pyflasher/…
• Flash the firmware using the flash tool
• Run the tool
• Holding the flash button, connect your NodeMCU with it.
• Now, select the serial port you want to use
• Choose the firmware file
• Click Flash

Install the roller blind code

• You can download the roller blind codes here: https://bitbucket.org/ehsmaes/motor_rollerblind/s…
• Now, download the ESPlorer IDE: https://esp8266.ru/esplorer/
• Open ESPlorer IDE
• Again choose the serial port
• Click connect
• Now, open all the Lua files you made previously.
• Edit the file named “Settings.lua” and enter MQTT and WiFi settings
• Upload all the Lua files that you worked on (Save to ESP).
• Lastly, restart your device

Step 5: Trial Runs

Now, you should check if what you made works or not. Don’t worry that’s also very easy to do.

• Open up ESPlorer IDE and connect with your device.
• Run the command line shown in the picture. The motor should be able to rotate 1000 steps.

Step 6: 3D Print the equipment needed

This is the simplest step so far. I’ve taken the liberty of finding the designed parts for you. You can download them here

Step 7: Assembling All the Parts

Here’s everything you’ll need to do for assembling the parts:

• Heat up the soldering iron to almost 200 degrees C (400 F).
• Embed the nut inserts into the plastics by placing the insert over the tip (so it heats up) and gently push it into the plastic sockets.
• Now, remove the lever you see from the microswitch
• Gently, loosen the plastic hinge on the lid button (gently push it out and back in)
• Carefully, put the microswitch in place
• Put the motor shield into place
• Insert the motor
• Screw in the plastic parts with the nails

Step 8: Mounting the Roller Blinds

Remove/replace the springloaded shield and insert of the roller blind of whichever company you’re using with the printed motor mount and printed inserts.

Step 9: Calibrate it

Windows are often of different sizes and shapes; hence the gadget has to be calibrated. This is how:

• Long press the button (> 2s)
• Short press the button when the shade reaches the desired bottom position.
• Short press again when the shade reaches the desired top position.

Step 10: Finalize the MQTT Control

• Download MQTT.fx from here: http://mqttfx.jfx4ee.org/index.php/download
• Start the program
• Create a profile to match similar to the broker profile you made earlier and connect.
• Subscribe to the topic from config.lua e. g. “/house/masterbedroom/#” without the quotes. If you don’t have anything else on your broker bus you can subscribe to everything (e. g. “#”)
• After every two minutes, you should see heartbeat messages sent out from your device.
• Lastly, publish to the topic matching config.Lua “/house/masterbedroom/rollerblind/0/set”, to control the device.

WHY INVEST IN DIY MOTORIZED WINDOW SHADES?

There are many advantages that you would get when you set your own DIY Motorized window shades. Nonetheless, you may even think about it as “Is it a solid match for me?” That’s all that matters whether the motorized shades would be valuable for your property in urban areas like New York, London, or not. I can guarantee you that words can’t portray how simple it makes life, where everything is only a touch away. An actual existence where innovation rotates around making ease for you is truly an experience. Creating a homemade version of these window shades gives you the benefits of both world in a cost-efficient manner.

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