Everyone likes sunshine-unless you want to watch a movie theater in your home theater, or when the summer makes the room unbearably warm, or when you want to take a nap. Cover the windows with Graber virtual cord electric curtains, and you can use the remote control to control the amount of sunlight entering the room. And, because they are equipped with Z-Wave radios, you can incorporate shadows into your smart home system, turn them on and off as planned, and control Alexa or Google Assistant through voice commands.
When I initially considered equipping my home theater with shadows, I didn’t think that I wanted to darken the room during the day and wanted electric models, so they could be incorporated into the Vivint smart home system. I don’t know there are many other decisions that I need to consider. There is a handy decision-making guide on Graber’s website that asks you about the shape of the windows, the amount of light to pass through the shadows, the degree of privacy they hope they provide, whether they need heat insulation and light control, and the color and material type will be consistent with your room’s The decoration matches your personal design aesthetics.
Installing the shadow in the window frame inevitably causes light leakage on the top and sides, but I don’t want to cover the window decoration.
I found it to be a very educational and useful tool, but Graber does not directly sell its products, and its website barely covers how to operate electric curtains or how to integrate them into smart home systems. It is also worth noting that Graber does not provide any method of controlling shadows other than the remote control. You will learn from this assessment that if you want to get the most benefit from it, you will need to have a Z-Wave compatible smart home hub and a smart speaker.
ZebraBlinds, one of Graber’s distributors, specializes in curtain processing for smart homes. In this review, they provided two Graber virtual wire-controlled electric blinds (two so that I can test the options for controlling them as a whole ). They also provided helpful suggestions when I installed the sun shade and incorporated it into my own smart home system.
The larger of the two windows in my home theater faces south, so the sun constantly shines on it, making the room uncomfortable in summer. I also hope to use curtains to make the room darker during the day, so we can use the room for a predetermined purpose on weekends: watching movies. According to the Graber decision guide echoed by ZebraBlinds, I chose a double-cell honeycomb shade made from Graber’s Cocoon fabric. According to Graber, the honeycomb fabric consists of three layers of metalized polyester film sealed between spunlace fabrics.
The double grid structure greatly improves the heat insulation value of these lampshades and their ability to block sunlight.
These shadows will not darken the room at night. In other words, they block enough sunlight to not only enable my Samsung Q7F QLED TV to provide the best image, but also allow me to activate the ceiling mounted Epson PowerLite Cinema 500 video projector at any time of the day. More importantly, turning off the shadows on hot days can make my home theater cooler, thereby reducing the amount of air conditioning needed in my home.
According to third-party test results cited by Graber (from Architectural Testing, Inc.), when installed behind double-pane windows, these sun visors can reduce the heat transferred to the room by 56%. If you live in a colder climate, then you will want to know that sun shades also have strong insulation properties, which can reduce the heat transfer from the room by 22.2%. Assuming that the ambient light from the TV or video projector is not enough to make you feel comfortable, some of these energy savings will be offset by any lighting you turn on in the room. You can view and download the PDF of the report by clicking the link below.
Graber provides the metal bracket that you need to screw into the window frame. You also need to determine where to order curtains. They can be installed inside the window frame, which will allow light to pass from either side of the top and shadows or outside the window frame and slightly higher than the gap in the window frame. In the latter case, you may want to purchase an optional hanging cloth to cover the front railing containing the electric motor. Despite the tiny gap, I chose to install it internally because we have decorative decorations around the windows, so I don’t want to block the shadows.
Although the antenna of the Z-Wave radio must be exposed, Graber should do more to hide the Somfy electric motor.
Graber uses Somfy’s 12-volt motor to raise and lower the shadows, and the motor is controlled by the Z-Wave Plus radio. Somfy also provides a simple two-button single-channel Z-Wave remote control. I installed the remote control on the wall next to the light switch, but you can slide it off the plastic bracket and move it to the sofa.
The Fancier remote control can be provided additionally. For example, there is a three-button remote control, which adds a “home” button to return the curtain to the preferred position; there is also a multi-channel remote control with a monochrome LCD display that can control up to 24 electric curtain. The multi-channel remote control has 12 channels, each channel can control one or more shadows, and each channel can control up to 8 shadows.
The motor of the hood of course needs a power source, and wall warts are provided for this. However, most houses do not have power outlets in the window frames, so Graber provides a battery pack that can power the sun blinds. Raising and lowering the shadow consumes a lot of power, so if you don’t want to deal with wall warts, you need to install eight AA lithium batteries.
If the sun shade is installed outside the window frame, fix the battery pack on the wall above the front armrest, which is more reason for hanging cloth in this case. Through internal installation, the battery pack is hung on the rear of the roof beam, the same type as the bracket that connects the sun shade to the window frame. However, when you hang the battery pack on the back of the head beam, you can hide it when you enter the room, but this has two disadvantages.
First, when the battery needs to be replaced, you need to lower the shade to use the battery pack. This can be troublesome when you are dealing with larger shadows and you might need help. Secondly, the back of the roof armrest, as well as a part of the electric motor, battery pack and its cables, the antenna of the Z-Wave radio and three or more mounting brackets are all exposed to anyone, from outside your home
The back of the Graber electric sunshade is not the most beautiful when viewed from the other side of the window. It’s also worth noting that no matter which color you choose for the inside of the shade, the back is white.
The exposed hardware is certainly not aesthetically satisfactory, but you may not care whether there is a distance between the window and the place where you can reasonably expect someone to look from the outside. On the other hand, if there are terraces, porches, or sidewalks in the immediate vicinity of the windows, the visibility is poor. In addition, if you choose a darker shade for the room like me, no matter which color of interior decoration you choose, the back of the shade facing the window will be white. Compared with dyed fabrics, this helps reflect sunlight, reduces heat transfer, and is significantly less fading.
Raising and lowering shadows with the remote control is fun, but why press a button when you can order the digital assistant to perform an operation? However, since neither Amazon nor Google smart speakers directly support Z-Wave, you will need to have a smart home hub between the two. ZebraBlinds told me that many customers use Samsung SmartThings or Hubitat Elevation smart home hubs for this, but I chose to register the curtains (and their remotes) into my Vivint smart home system.
Screw the plastic block into the wall to install Graber’s two-button remote control. To carry the remote control with you, just swipe up.
The wrinkle is that Vivint does not directly support electric blinds, so if you encounter problems, the company’s technical support may not be able to help you, and it is extremely unlikely that the truck will be pushed out of your home. But it is commendable that it does not completely prohibit you from installing unsupported products. For me, this is the best of both worlds: I get all the benefits of a smart home system that is professionally installed, monitored and technically supported, but as long as I have the will, I can use the DIY approach.
Vivint Smart Home does not directly support motorized curtains, but the company will not prevent you from adding them to the system.
In order to prevent anyone from invading your Vivint system, you need to call technical support and provide a security password to temporarily unlock the control panel. Then you can register the shadow as a Z-Wave dimmer. Once this is done, you can use the Vivint app on the Vivint Sky control panel or use Alexa to control the shadows through my Amazon Echo and compatible Sonos smart speakers. I also have Google Home speakers, but I often communicate with Alexa.
Since shadows are treated as dimmer switches, you need to control them. For example, in the Vivint application, the direct shadow control ranges from “off” (shadows are completely closed) to “open” in five angles (effectively 20%, 40%, 60%, 80% or 100% open) . Just like all other Z-Wave dimmers I installed.
Vivint’s smart home app makes it easy to create custom routines using various events as triggers, so I created a rule to set the shadows to be on 80% at sunrise and 0% on at sunset (i.e. off ). As with direct device control, you can choose 10%, 40%, 60%, 80% or 100% here.
I could have created other rules based on the schedule (for example, running at a rate of 60% every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 7 am, and then stopping at 6:30 pm on the same day); according to the status of my security system (When it is in armed stay mode, or when I usually sleep in bed, it will close); or even open a given percentage when one or any of my exterior doors are open. There are many other possibilities, although not all are appropriate. For example, when my video doorbell detects a visitor, I can turn the shadow on or off, but do I want it?
Strangely, the Vivint system allows you to assign devices to groups-I created a device called “Theater Shadow” and assigned two theater shadows to it-but then I discovered that although a group of devices can be manually controlled, But cannot create rules for communities. I initially reported that this forced me to create separate rules for each shade, but a Vivint spokesperson reached out and told me that I can include multiple devices in the rule definition (by placing a check mark next to each device), Even the grouping device is still on the roadmap of its developers.
Vivint can be used with Alexa and Google Assistant, but as I mentioned earlier, I mainly rely on smart speakers compatible with Alexa, so here I will introduce my experience with the digital assistant. Unlike Vivint, Amazon allows you to control groups of smart home devices so that they can operate in sync. Using the Alexa application, I first created a room named “Theater”, and then named the two shadows “Theater Shadows” and “Theater Shadows Two”. This way, I can press a button in the app to open both shadows at the same time (“All Open”), and I can close both shadows at the same time using the button labeled “Close All”. Vivint’s application is actually better at this score, which allows me to specify how open I want the shadow to be (the two have the same value).
Amazon’s Alexa routine allows you to create complex sequences of events using smart home devices.
On the other hand, using the Alexa app, I can create custom routines that can trigger one shadow or two shadows at the same time without having to communicate with Alexa, as if I was controlling the dimmer switch. For example, I created a custom routine that when I said “Alexa, open the big shadow midway”, I set the larger of the two electric shadows to 50%. This is much more natural than “Alexa, set “Theater Shadow” to 50%). Also, you are not limited to five increments of “Open”. You can use the slider to select any number on the 100-point scale.
I set up other Alexa routines to turn on the shadows, expose the southern shadow to 80% (to block the afternoon sun at high altitude in the afternoon), and expose the shadow of the other shadow (facing west) to 100% shadow Close them at the same time
If you have other compatible devices in your smart home system, you can also mix them into the Alexa routine. I created a routine so that when I say “Alexa, this is movie time”, both electric curtains are closed, my TV is turned on, and the wall lights on both walls are lit at 42% brightness (they All are powered by the same Z-dimmer), and the fans of all my other A/V devices installed in the entertainment center are turned on. Make your phrases easy for Alexa to understand. If you have the right device, you can almost ask her what to do.
Shade is not a ready-made product or impulse purchase. They need to be customized for your windows, and you need to wait a few weeks for delivery (the lead time for ZebraBlinds is 2.5 to 4 weeks, depending on demand). In addition to the other decisions mentioned above, you also need to decide the style you need, which type of fabric, which color, etc. Each of these decisions will affect the price of the shadow. Graber and its distributors, including ZebraBlinds, will send you free swatches so you can choose what you like.
You should take some time, because these things are not cheap. ZebraBlinds charge about $580 for the larger sun blinds required for my home theater (58 x 58 inches), and about $483 for the shadows required for the narrower but equally high windows (33 x 58 inches). But ZebraBlinds sales representatives told me via email that the company usually offers discounts on its website and often offers discounts to “home automation” customers offered through forums such as the SmartThings community forum. It is indeed different, but we always have something (customers can ask us for coupons or inquire on various forums). ”
In a discount scheme, ZebraBlinds offered a 41% “SmartThings discount”, which would reduce my $1,063.50 order for two blinds to $627.46. Another scenario is to provide a 15% “whole network discount, applicable to certain honeycomb or pleated blinds”, which will reduce my order to $744.45. Since any order you may place will be customized, and we have no way of knowing what discounts you might get when making a purchase, we canceled the pricing in the “Overview” box of this review.
These Graber virtual wire-controlled electric hoods are indeed cheaper than I thought, but they are definitely one of the most expensive accessories you can use to equip your smart home. The fabrics of these colors are made of look and feel, and the honeycomb design has excellent darkening and heat insulation functions.
Both the raising and lowering Somfy motors remain quiet. Sitting on a sofa about four feet away from the window, I found that the noise level when opening the blinds from the fully closed position increased by 9.6dB (I measured the average background noise level of the home theater to be 24.9dB, compared to 34.5dB when the hood motor is running).
The motor can roll up a 58-inch curtain in less than 30 seconds, or use the remote control to lower it to a fully closed position. Commands relayed through the Vivint Smart Home app or Alexa are slightly delayed due to instructions that need to move up and down in the cloud.
You can use these motorized blinds without a broader smart home system-the Z-Wave remote is pre-paired with the blinds and is very easy to use-but if you have two smart home centers and smart speakers at the same time. In this regard, be prepared to invest some time to control the shadows alone or together with other smart home devices. But this is an interesting part for any enthusiast.
I want to see Graber propose a better battery box design (the battery can be replaced without removing the lamp cover) and develop something for the back of the top cover to cover exposed debris and debris. Add aesthetic value to the shadow. In addition to these nits, Graber’s electric sun blinds also bring them huge benefits.
Although you also need a smart home hub and a smart speaker to get the most benefit from it, Graber virtual wire-controlled electric hood is not as expensive as you think. They are also very stylish and extremely convenient, and some models can help reduce heating and cooling costs.
Michael is responsible for the smart home, home entertainment and home network beats in the smart home he built in 2007.
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Post time: Dec-18-2020