Automating my fancy blinds with software defined radio

Have you ever splashed out on some motorized blinds and then wanted to hook them up to home automation?

I have.

And while I am pleased with them, having sprung for the blinds themselves, adding £269.10 to the bill for the official gateway that hooks them up to wifi, Alexa, etc. … wasn’t going to happen.

Fortunately, someone on the internet has figured out a different solution: a cheap ESP32 device with a radio transceiver attached can control these blinds and you just pair it to them like a remote control.

£12 on AliExpress and a bit of a wait for delivery later, the parts arrived, and just three short months later, I finally got bored of them lying on my desk and put them together. The hardware assembly was straightforward:

I’m so pleased with it that I might have to get a 3D printed case, or at least punch some proper holes in the cardboard box it currently lives in.

The installation/flashing experience was surprisingly slick; I had no idea all this sort of thing could run directly from a web page these days, but it can, and it even prompts you to install the (proper signed) device driver for mounting the ESP32 as a COM port.

It took a couple of evenings fiddling with the settings and reading the github issues to get everything configured to the point where the device reliably makes the blinds move 100% of the time, and always picks up the remote controls.

It’s still not quite right when it comes to tilting the slats, but I almost never do that anyway, so whatever.

Next stop, Home Assistant integration!