Automating Your Home Window Coverings

Automating Your Home Window Coverings

Smart homes, also known as home automation, have been on the rise since the early 2000s. The goal of home automation is to connect household appliances to the web or the cloud where they can be operated remotely through our handheld mobile devices. Instead of having to be present in your home to manually key - in security codes, close your garage door, change the temperature or even turn on outdoor flood lights, such everyday tasks can now be performed remotely.

Window coverings are one example of a smart home innovation that has become increasingly more common over the past few years. Where home automation has been more focused on security and remote controls for household appliances, the growing adoption of smart window coverings technology mark the realization of the prophesies of a future foretold in popular science fiction movies and tv shows.

There is now a variety of different brands offering smart technology for windows compatible with the latest voice assistants like Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri via Apple.

Lutron and Somfy are two of the more notable custom brands on the market–both of which we are proud to offer.

Below, we will take a deeper dive into these two brands to get a better sense of the capabilities of smart blind technology, and the related buyer considerations.

Lutron Serena custom made smart shades are extremely user-friendly and available in a wide range of dimensions, colors and styles. Their website enables visitors to design shades window by window; room by room. Lutron smart shades can be operated via Amazon Homekit, Alexa and Google Assistant.

As far as more traditional remote-control options are concerned, Lutron offers their own control via the Lutron Smart Bridge software. The Smart Bridge is compatible with Wink, Sonos, Nest, SmartThings and Logitech Harmony. Users can schedule what time of the day they want their shades to open as well as how much the they should open or close during a given time period.

Somfy Blinds, the biggest name in the industry has taken a more technologically savvy approach allowing for a host of different setup modifications. For example, Somfy users can select the actual motor that they will use for their shades. The Somfy MyLink app utilizes RTS (real time synchronization) motors, or Somfy owners can purchase Zigbee/Z wave units, which are compatible with standard smart home mainframes like Smart things. These components are small white boxes that fit onto the motors for your Somfy system.

Sounds overwhelming? No problem! We are here to do the hard work, so you may enjoy home automation.

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