Smart Window Blinds

  Since I purchased my home I have had black out curtains on all my windows so that I would have complete control over my lighting.  As part of my quest to lower my power consumption to match what my solar panels are producing I have started to reconsider the use of natural light. The obvious choice here is to add blinds/curtains/shades that I can control with my smart home. 

I chose to start by replacing the blackout curtains and blinds in my office with a FYRTUR smart blind from Ikea. This has proven to be an ok solution for a room that total darkness isn't needed in, but does not effectively block enough light for a bedroom. I will be looking into other solutions before replacing my bedroom curtains.

These blind support the ZigBee protocol, so adding them as a window cover in Home Assistant was very straight forward. The only issue I had was with adding the included remote to Home Assistant. I attempted to us the blueprint for the specific remote IKEA E1743 TRÅDFRI.  The issue is that IKEA uses the same model number for the remote but with different button labels and trigger actions delivered in the payload. I was able to create the necessary automations using that blueprint then manually edit the yaml to correct the string matching for the special remote included with the blinds. 

I have added automations to open the blinds as soon as my motion sensors detect I have started my day, close after sunset, and ensure they are closed when I leave my home zone.