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Both Soma Smart Shades stopped working within two days of installation despite being plugged in for power. Tech Support is only accessible via email and has yet to provide any guidance to my multiple requests for help. The next day, when tidying up the box I found that they provide a beaded chain with the unit.
As it happens, when I switched to using the Raspberry Pi ZeroW I just flashed the Soma Connect image onto a memory card rather than installing the package. I certainly don’t mind a £10 ZeroW being taken up for this purpose. Hi @Looping, to integrate the blind with other you will indeed need to get Soma Connect running. By clicking "I AGREE" below, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our personal data processing and cookie practices as described therein. You also acknowledge that this forum may be hosted outside your country and you consent to the collection, storage, and processing of your data in the country where this forum is hosted.
SOMA Smart Home
I tried it at 50% to reduce the noise level and not surprise the kids too much. With a beaded chain, though, it’s worth just keeping it at maximum to keep any operations shorter. I found dragging out the motor run time just made it more intrusive. Setup of the Connect is equally easy, just hold your phone next to the hub until it detects, provide your WiFi details and it will join the network. It takes care of finding the blind controllers itself, you don’t have to do anything. Once it’s on your network, you can follow the instructions on the web site to pair it with whatever platform you want to use.
This does increase the noise but it’s not as loud as the normal mode. By logging into your account, you agree to our Privacy Policy, personal data processing and storage practices as described therein. "The holidays are here. Many of us are probably spending them apart, but this picture frame from Brookstone is the perfect way to stay connected no matter how far apart your family is." Move your shades to a desired position with a slide of your finger.
SOMA Smart HomeLinks (
The only way to make sure all that is true is to have the Connect on a separate piece of hardware. All that said I know a lot of people who have done what you guys did here. But we just can’t afford to have to support all of this for thousands of people. We are a very small team of only 4 people and we still have to work on new features as well. SOMA Smart Shades is compatible with various endless loop chains and cords.
That makes sense, I can certainly see how having full control over the OS makes things a lot simpler. Your idea of a position check loop is a good one and I may look to implement something like this. In order to integrate the device with Home Assistant, you also need a Soma Connect unit which acts as a bridge between the device and the local network/internet. This unit is just a Raspberry Pi in a custom case and so, as an alternative, Soma provides an SD card image that you can flash onto your own Raspberry Pi .
Google Home
That will allow us to use all the new BT features as well as Zigbee and hopefully also directly integrate HomeKit without a hub. Unfortunately with our small team it will likely take a long time until we can actually start shipping devices with this new chipset. When we say unlimited that means we don’t do any artificial limiting in software. There is a practical limit but so far very few people have more than 20 shades and 20 seems to still work. Distance might be a bigger issue depending on what is between the Connect and the motor unit. Reinforced concrete is very good at absorbing 2400 MHz waves so that will reduce range a lot.
I prefer to have everything integrated both for convenience and for monitoring when away from home, but it does mean another hub. Apart from the controller itself, you have a solar panel for continuous charging, a spare beaded chain with no joins, and a USB cable. The only requirement is that the shade, blind or curtain has a beaded chain or cord loop.
Smart Shades has a built-in timer which can be used to automate opening and closing of your shades at specified times and days. Outside of Morning mode, you have the option to set the motor speed that will be used for all other operations of the blind. This is a simple percentage slider, so you can play with it a bit and set a speed that seems right for you. The default 100% is quite fast, and you may need a slower one for heavier blinds to avoid slippage.
The motor can’t handle joiners of any kind, as they will jam the drive gear. The provided one is a continuous loop with no joins (I’m still trying to figure out how you make one of those). I’ve long had an interest in DIY smart shade devices, but none have really hit all the right notes for me until Soma updated their offering. I’ve been testing the Soma Smart Shades 2 controller for a few months now, and for me it’s been really delivering the goods, but it won’t be for everyone.
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The Sunrise/Sunset options require access to your phone’s location to determine your latitude and season. I had trouble with this initially, even after granting the app access it still got hung up trying to determine where I was. After waiting a bit it started working, so it seems the access permission didn’t make itself available to the app quickly enough at the time. Soma provides good setup instructions on their web site, and they direct you there from the outset. While the Smart Shades app does step you through the process, you’ll need to go to the web site to see how to feed the chain into the drive gear as the app doesn’t show you.
Plus, being locally controlled you’re not worrying about internet reliability or someone else’s servers being online for your blinds to work when you want them to. Add to this the extensive integration support through the optional Soma Connect hub and this is easily the best DIY blind controller currently available. There are a few DIY smart shade options out there, many of these are full packaged blinds or shades with built in motors. That’s great if you want new shades, and your windows match the pre-fitted sizing. If you already have perfectly good blinds, though, you’ll might be happy enough adding a motor to the existing pull cord. I just installed a soma smart shade 2 device as well to my blinds.
for piece of mind.
Smart Shades is compatible with any shade, blind or curtain that has a beaded chain or cord loop. Smart Shades is compatible with any shade or blind that has a beaded chain or cord loop. Once the installation is done, the app will take you through a calibration phase where you can precisely set the open and close end points for your blind. From then on the open percentage is based on those extents.
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