iBlinds with Vera & Alexa

Anybody else using iBlinds (www.myiblinds.com)? They’re Zwave-based and integrate well with Vera. I can program my blinds to open and close at various times of the day and with various weather conditions (using Reactor app).

The problem is with Alexa integration. Under “Manage Alexa,” my blinds are not listed under devices, so I can’t add a check mark to add them to Alexa.

With “Manage Google Home,” however, my blinds are listed as devices under “Window Coverings.” Using Google Home, I can open, close, and set a percentage, i.e., “Open blinds 60%”).

With Alexa, I get nothing. “Alexa doesn’t support that.”

Hi,

I have the same with Alexa so I created scenes to open/close. However, as it is a bit odd to say “Alexa, turn on open curtains” i added two routines (Open curtains and close curtains that will run the respective scenes) in the Alexa app so i can just say “Alexa, open curtains”.

So bit of a detour, but same effect. Except for being able to set them at any percentage of course.

Cheers Rene

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we’re really far behing Alexa’s capabilities with the current Alexa plugin. I suggest you to look at homeassistant if you want 100% support, or write to support to urge them to add more devices, since wer’re 1 or 2 years behind. the solution proposed by @reneboer works 100% and that’s what I’m using as well.

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iBlinds work fine when controlling them with the Vera App or website. Controlling iBlinds with Alexa still sucks. I ended up buying a Google Home to control the blinds by voice using Vera. “Hey Google, open blinds 60%.” I’m still not sure if this is an Amazon problem or a Vera.

Now iBlinds has released v3, which uses Z-Wave 700 and S2 security. Does anyone know if the new version will work with the current VeraPlus UI7?

Still no EU version with the v3 launch.

I contacted them a while ago and they said they did have plans for an EU version.

But perhaps not…

Just discovered this aging thread. To answer Lonestar10’s question, in case he or anyone else still has it, iBlinds v3 does work with UI7. In fact, UI7 can now set up v3 mostly correctly while v2 still needs to have parameters reset manually.

The changes from v2 to v3 are otherwise pretty underwhelming, at least for those of us who are not going to write our own code. And for v3 info the iBlinds web site is apparently still a work in progress after all these months.

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V3 also means you can now use these in the EU and Australia as its Z-Wave 700 chip the frequency can be changed.

So are these decent motors for venetian slat blinds?

[broken link removed]

I highly recommend iBlinds. I have 10 of these installed in my home and they work great. Occasionally, one might not open or close when my scenes use multicast but the CTO of MyiBlinds, Slicon Labs and Oleg are investigating the root cause - in the mean time, I just insert a 1 second delay between blinds in the scenes to work around the problem. V3 is firmware upgradeable so if wringing out this small issue requires a firmware upgrade, it won’t be an issue. IMHO, you can’t go wrong with iBlinds.

(EDIT) Coincidentally, this hit my mailbox shortly after I replied. If you are interested, $99 bucks is a steal!

I’ve been running 5 iBlinds on my Venetian blinds for 2 months now. They are the v3 version, with the original firmware on them.

They work fine with my vera 3, pairing was smooth (as a generic z-wave device). One device got mixed up, where it showed ‘device not responding’. Commands were handled fine, but the vera didn’t receive acknowledgments from the iBind. This led to a big delay in running scenes. Repairing this device solved the issue.

I’m running the iBlinds with solar power, so far I had to recharge 1 device. But it’s hardly catching any sunlight, specially during winter.

Multicast commands don’t work from the standard vera scenes it seems. So opening all blinds results in them opening one by one. I hope to improve this once I move to the Ezlo platform.

Oh, and the motors are pretty noise during operation, I was expecting them to be more civilised.

I don’t think Vera supports multicast… Ezlo does, but I’m pretty sure the Vera doesn’t. I failed to state that all 10 of mine are paired with Ezlo hubs.