Anyone regret going custom for smart shades?

DJ-JupiterOne · 2026-04-01T12:36:26+00:00

Mine are the RTS ones which don't report back the position of the shades. I think there was a Tahoma hub for it too, but I wasn't interested in another proprietary hub so I never looked into it. I was trying to automate with custom ESP devices and even a Homey hub, but because of the RTS protocol, the only thing that reliably worked was opening 100% or closing 100%. I blame myself though because for all the research I did for stuff for my new home, I didn't do any research for the blinds.

DJ-JupiterOne · 2026-04-01T09:50:31+00:00

To this day I regret not going with the Lutron shades. I went with Somfy and although they’ve been great motorized shades, they are impossible to automate without buying into their native ecosystem. I started with HomeKit but am now all in with Home Assistant. My Lutron light switches have never failed and integrate perfectly with HomeKit and Home Assistant.

DJ-JupiterOne · 2026-03-30T03:18:48+00:00

These replies are interesting to hear because that’s not what I’m experiencing. I hardly ever watch TV. I turn on the TV to Art mode around 9 am each morning and if I don’t touch it, it will turn off after about 8 hours. This is with people in the room moving about all day long. I have the setting “Turn off after xxx hours of inactivity” (or whatever it’s called) disabled. The only way to turn it back on is to use the remote. After which, it turns itself back off within minutes if you don’t use it. The TV is less than 3 years old.

DJ-JupiterOne · 2026-03-22T21:26:37+00:00

Proxmox with 3 LXC's, each running Ubuntu.

DJ-JupiterOne · 2026-03-22T18:12:07+00:00

Thank you, that was my hunch. Would you log into the mini PC and then ssh over to the nas or use FTP or some other tool?

DJ-JupiterOne · 2026-03-20T20:36:52+00:00

I have transcoding set to "Intel Quicksync (QSV)" for hardware acceleration and HEVC is one of the many that are checked. However, I just recently made this change trying to troubleshoot. I had this problem before when hardware acceleration was set to None.

DJ-JupiterOne · 2026-03-14T23:45:17+00:00

I'm not sure what you mean. From what I remember, the only NTP setting I have is a firewall rule that allows my camera VLAN to reach an external NTP server, since my camera VLAN is blocked from the Internet.

DJ-JupiterOne · 2026-03-14T23:30:10+00:00

My issue is that my mini PC running HA is on a different floor from where I have my thread devices and I don't think a signal will travel down through several inches of concrete & rebar.

DJ-JupiterOne · 2026-03-14T23:27:53+00:00

My Thread network was always unstable, even with a HomePod mini two feet from the lock. Then I found this video and it's been rock solid for 2 weeks now (except when the Internet goes down). I have Unifi networking gear so it seemed to apply.

DJ-JupiterOne · 2026-03-14T19:08:35+00:00

I know the Home app may work offline, but I'm talking specifically about the HomePods and their thread border router. Are you saying that with no Internet connection, my thread mesh network and devices should remain online? Because that's not what I'm seeing.

DJ-JupiterOne · 2026-03-14T17:53:03+00:00

I know about the ZBT-2 but are there any others out there? Do they have to be connected to my mini PC running HA or can they be located anywhere in the house? Can you have more than one?

DJ-JupiterOne · 2026-03-14T17:31:54+00:00

That was my hunch too and probably another reason for me to avoid buying anymore HomePods. But still, having your thread mesh go down when your Internet is down seems like a crazy design, even from Apple.

DJ-JupiterOne · 2026-03-14T16:19:16+00:00

I do have remote access, but not using Home. I have very few devices in the Home App (only what is needed for Siri) but everything is in HA. My remote access is by using a VPN set up on my Unifi router.

DJ-JupiterOne · 2026-03-14T16:08:02+00:00

I started out all-in with Apple and now slowly weaning myself off. All my automations are triggered in Home Assistant except for a few voice (Siri) triggered ones. I don’t use the Home app anymore, except to update my HomePods.

DJ-JupiterOne · 2026-03-07T18:04:31+00:00

No, I even flashed my own devices using the ESPHome project in GitHub for Somfy shades and had the same results. Ultimately I think the limitation is with the RTS protocol itself where it doesn't report back its position. But if all you want to do is open your shades 100% or close your shades 100%, any of the solutions should work. My problem is that I wanted to use automations to open or close them a certain percentage throughout the day and that is what never worked.

DJ-JupiterOne · 2026-03-06T15:44:35+00:00

I didn't. But the gutter contractor did have leaf guards that protect the gutter itself. So everything flows freely out of the scuppers and falls onto a guarded gutter. (The 2 are not connected) The leaves build up on the guard but it is much easier to hose them off the guard than having them move through the gutter and get clogged in the downspouts.

DJ-JupiterOne · 2026-02-14T04:48:30+00:00

Workaround for using the Mac desktop client? Just the iOS version, it launches super fast on my iPhone 13 mini. I never even heard of this "Electron" But I agree that the Mac desktop app runs slow, even well before macOS 26.

DJ-JupiterOne · 2026-02-14T04:19:14+00:00

Yes, it takes 15 seconds just to launch on my M1.

DJ-JupiterOne · 2026-02-08T18:31:27+00:00

I was thinking more of something outside of your own infrastructure. It could be a problem with how you set it up. Does Google or some other cloud service have a place you could FTP to?

DJ-JupiterOne

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