Newbie Q: ERB25 roller blind motor control?

Hello experts.

I ma investigating purchasing a set of roller blind motors from a Chinese outfit. The device is referred to as ERB25-1.5/30 (It’s for a 25mm diameter tube, provides 1.5Nm torque at 30 rpm). It has a rechargeable battery and a receiver (I presume an RF).

It’s not clear whether this device can be controlled through a Vera (I have an old VeraLite that does the job for me just fine, so I haven’t bothered upgrading).

Do any of the experts have some tips to guide me?

Regards,

Lane

This device operates in the 433.92 Mhz band. So at the very least you’d have to have the RFXtrx transceiver from RFXCOM since the Vera hubs do not handle the various protocols in this band (The Vera Secure hub includes a VeraLink proprietary protocol that operates in this band but as it is proprietary I can’t see how it would work with this device). That said, even with the RFXtrx transceiver you couldn’t be sure you could control this device. It is not listed in the RFXtrx user guide.

Many thanks for your prompt response. I am trying to get the specific bytes used by this manufacturer (hopefully they will provide that info). Assuming I get that info, I guess I still need to add something to Vera to be an RF transmitter?

The blind motors are relatively inexpensive (quoting around $45 per + $10 for a 16-channel transmitter).Of course, this is a Chinese company, so I probably will get a few motors that don’t work!

Shame if I can’t somehow leverage that! I will be able to control the blinds locally of course, but control away from home would be nice.

I can’t imagine what kind of response you might get from the manufacturer. I’d be surprised they give you specific details about their design. They would have to tell you what kind of encoding they’re using or perhaps what components they’re using to do the encoding.
As I said in my previous post you would have to purchase an RFXtrx433e or RFXtrx433XL. This device encodes/transmits and receives/decodes messages in the 433.92 Mhz band. It communicates these through a USB connection to the Vera hub.

Thanks! I will look into getting n RFXtrx433e or XL.

Regards…

Glad to help - but keep in mind that even having the RFXtrx transceiver, you still may not be able to control these blind motors. I couldn’t find a user manual for this roller blind device online. I wanted to find out how the remote is paired with the motor. You may limit your risk a bit if you just buy the remote and the RFXtrx. That way you may be able to determine if the RFXtrx can decode signals from the remote.

Good idea to buy just the transmitter, along with the RFXtrx. The folks I was chatting with at the manufacturer seemed to indicate that they would be able to provide data packet details to me, but I guess I will wait and see,

Thanks.

There’s also MySensors.org that has a Vera Plugin. Here’s a post from the forums where a user was able to control 433MHz Dooya blind motors. Perhaps some prior art for your project - Pete used an inexpensive 433MHz transceiver. The MySensors team is very responsive and helpful if you want to exercise your DIY.

Thanks! Definitely keep in mind. I’m a typical lazy engineer - reuse wherever possible!

Hi Ianewsa !

Did you ever get resolution on this ? I control a number of DOOYA curtains through a RFXtrx433 and would love to get aset of ERB25 for my deck… However, as stated earlier, they do not appear in the list of controllable devices…

Anyone has made this work ?

Paul.

I too am interested if this worked. I’m looking to buy new blinds and the Chinese outfit option sounds good.

I’d avoid RF motors. No feedback into Vera about RF devices current status?

Just get dumb standard motors with no comms and use a Z-Wave roller shutter module.

Dooya motors are good quality it’s what I use with Fibaro Roller shutter modules.

Apologies - been tied up with a bunch of other stuff. Manufacturer was unwilling to share codes with me. So I need to figure out how to snoop the codes and try that way. I will be unable to do anything until end of October, but do plan on getting to it in a bit more dedicated manner then.

The Chinese manufacturer I use has (so far) been pretty reliable and helpful except for not sharing transmitter codes. Not sure why they have an issue.

I decided to go with RF motors simply because the Chinese motors I got were dirt cheap. I got one sample to test with, and has sop far been working very well (initially charged the motor battery in early March, raise/lower blind twice a day, and haven’t needed to recharge yet). In bulk (Qty 10 or greater) they want $45 each includes brackets/adapters. All I needed to do was share the aluminum tube cross-section with measurements. They even sent me CAD files for the adapters in case I wanted to modify/print.

I just got the motor; reused the blind fabric and aluminum tube. It was easy to insert the motor assembly and program it using the provided transmitter.

There was a slight mismatch on one of the adapters (free spinning side). The provided adapter was too big to fit inside my aluminum tube. The brackets they provided were 4mm too tall compared to the ones I had before. I was able to grind off enough of the bracket holder so that I could use the slightly longer bracket on one side and the older (slightly shorter) one on the other side. The aluminum tube is sufficiently level and works fine.

So worst case, I need to do a bit of surgery on each bracket holder. Not too bad, but it saved me quite a bit of money.