Thanks @sheriff-fatman 

Who is the supplier for those blinds please?

I have blinds on my south-facing windows, but not the three panels of the bi-fold doors.
The door design looks almost the same as yours, with a 41mm recess where a blind could be fitted.

Posted by: @downfield

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I also enjoy the challenge of getting the best out of solar, batteries and ASHP, although my wife is less sure about my enthusiasm to tinker.

On a slight tangent, I also dabble in Smart home gadgetry, but am conscious that if I were to disappear one day, it would be important that the property should not be difficult/ impossible for the next owner to operate.

With that in mind, I have two rules:

1  all devices must work with Apple Homekit natively i.e. no 3rd party apps or hubs required and 

1a  preferably also be Matter and Thread-compliant

2  any device controlling a power socket or light must have a physical switch that is still fully functional as a backup

OK that's 3 rules

This is because one increasingly reads about smart home hardware suppliers discontinuing support for the smart devices, often with little notice.  Apple, I feel (and probably Google as well, although they aren't blameless on this front) is more likely to stay the course with Homekit, and is rumoured to be readying a significant upgrade for release in 2026.

Getting to the point:

You can now get miniature relays that sit behind a normal light switch and act as a remote/wireless two-way switch.

In other words, you can still use the physical switch if nearby, to change the state of the lamp but you can also use Homekit, either as a simple switch, or more usefully as part of a timed / programmed group of actions or a scene.

I've tried a few of these relays, but have settled on the Sonoff MiniR4M.  They just about fit in a 25mm deep wall box - although 35mm is less tight - and the "M" at the end signifies Matter compliance.  Sonoff also make a lot of Zigbee devices.

They pair easily on wifi and have so far proved very reliable.  I have about 12 switches thus equipped, and have been able to remove the outside "dusk to dawn" sensors and simply set the outside lights to come on an hour after sunset until midnight or whenever.

After that, movement detectors (I use Eve Motion which are Matter compatible) by the front gate and at points around the garden will also trigger all the outside lights to switch on for a defined period without any complicated wiring arrangements. 

I know that all the HA veterans will be laughing at the simplicity of this, but if you don't need the power of HA it works well, and at low cost.  The MiniR4M relays are about £12 - less if you buy multiples.

I love this post. I also agree that anything of any real importance should have a "plan B" for alternative operation. That's one reason why I've kept the heat pump and inverter talking home with their respective manufacturers.

It's worth bearing in mind that Home Assistant has integrations for dealing with Homekit, Matter and similar smart platforms, so it's straightforward to set up, for instance, your Eve Motion device within Matter and also control it within HA. I find that particularly important for much the same reasons you give, since HA and Matter/Homekit etc. provide enduring protection from each other’s obsolescence.

I certainly wouldn’t laugh at your setup - simple or otherwise - since the only criterion that matters is whether or not it works for you. This thread is not, I would underline, a “how to use Home Assistant” topic, and all the tinkering you’re outlining is every bit as valid. The only setup I'd raise an eyebrow over is one that doesn't suit what the owner wants; a solution trying to find a problem to solve, if you will.

As for in-switch relays and the like, I've got used to the Shelly kit so that's probably what I'll pick when I come to add power monitoring to all the sockets. However, Sonoff appears to be good solid stuff too and I've just noticed they do a barbecuing meat probe that'll take four separate sensors; it looks like you may just have made a sale for them....

Posted by: @transparent

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Thanks @sheriff-fatman 

Who is the supplier for those blinds please?

I have blinds on my south-facing windows, but not the three panels of the bi-fold doors.
The door design looks almost the same as yours, with a 41mm recess where a blind could be fitted.

We're using a local company called M&M Blinds in Leeds, but there are many companies out there offering similar solutions, including web-based ones where you measure and fit them yourselves after delivery.  We have just under 17m^2 of glazing to be covered overall in the conservatory, most going down to the level of the dwarf wall, but with the bi-fold doors being full height.

The roller blind areas are being fitted 'like a toilet roll holder done the wrong way round' so that they're as close as possible to the glazing.  We're limited in some options due to there being no flat section above the door and window frames where some other types of frame would ordinarily fit, as the angle of the roofing section commences immediately above them.

We've just been given a date of 23rd January for the fitting for ours, so I can provide some pictures in due course, if this would be of interest.  Having two different types of blind in one room sounds odd, but these won't interfere with the operation of the bi-fold door.  Logically, we would have needed 2 separate ceiling to floor roller blinds as the alternative, or vertical blinds which we decided would be less practical than the option we've gone for.

Posted by: @sheriff-fatman

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One potential project on my future wish list will be to potentially convert the blinds we have in our living room and the ones that we're adding into the conservatory in January converted to motorised ones that can be set to trigger via timers.  The living room has a bay window requiring 3 of them to be closed and opened, which isn't a huge issue.  However, they might be tricky, as they're vertical blinds with 'wands' to control them, and the motorised kits all seem to be for roller or venetian blinds so I've yet to find an option that would work for them.

For the conservatory, the bi-fold doors will get 'perfect fit' inserts into the glazed areas, which will naturally stay with manual operation.  The window glazing frames are too shallow for this to be an option, so they're getting roller blinds.  These are restricted to a maximum width, so we'll end up with 6 of them to cover the full glazed, non-doorway area.  The quote to include motorising them with the installation added around £1,000 to the installation price, so we opted against it as a bit of a non-essential luxury.  I'll investigate whether it's something that can be integrated via a motorised kit at a later stage, and at what cost, but having an automated schedule to drop them at sunset for insulation purposes, if nothing else, would be a 'nice to have' option down the line.

Two comments.

Firstly, a colleague of mine has just that kind of setup; motorised bedroom blinds and an automation in Home Assistant to control them. However, his blinds are controlled by an app developed on a platform called Tuya (as, incidentally, is my robot vacuum) and Tuya is an absolute dog's breakfast to try and get working within any other platform. It's possible, but not pleasant, so personally I'd avoid blinds controlled by a Tuya-based app unless they're a particularly good deal.

Second is that if you are able to integrate your blinds into your HA ecosystem, you don't have to just limit yourself to timer-based operation. There's no reason why you couldn't get them to open or close based on a set time before or after sunset or sunrise, or close if there's a strong glare of sun on that particular wall. I presume it'd also be possible to vary the tilt of the slats as well as how extended the blinds are? If so, there's a world of grey to explore between the binary black of closed and white of open. You might even want to consider a bit of random-ish opening and closing when you're away to make the place look occupied (along with playing a recording of the dog barking whenever the security camera detects motion out the front - or is that going too far?)

😎

Posted by: @majordennisbloodnok

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I also agree that anything of any real importance should have a "plan B" for alternative operation.

Erm...

weren't we discussing a Plan Bee back on page-1 of this topic?  🐝

Posted by: @transparent

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Posted by: @majordennisbloodnok

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Growatt inverter and battery via modbus via an ethernet to modbus adapter to the RS485 port of the inverter

Let me point out that I'm changing away from using Growatt inverters, and replacing them with equivalent units by SunSynk.

There were two main issues when using a parallel set of Growatt units that had commands sent to them using Modbus over RS485

 

1: Inconsistent responses to Modbus commands:

Eg A command to tell the inverter-set to charge a battery from the grid would be executed correctly,
but the command to change back to solar-input wasn't obeyed. The inverters all remained connected to the grid.

The switch to revert to 'Solar First' required the mains incomer to be interrupted.
That was achievable by having relays on those incomers, also operated by the same microcontroller, but it shouldn't be necessary.

 

2: Unreliable responses to fault conditions:

Eg An internal fault on one inverter in the set would be reported on its inbuilt LCD panel.
The manual states that such a fault would cause the entire set to cease operating.
The faulty inverter should be isolated, and the remaining inverters re-started manually.

What actually occurred was that the other inverters continued to operate.
I'm not confident with that being 'safe'.

It's quite likely that these shortcomings only manifested when the inverters were connected as parallel units.
Others here on the forum with single inverters might find that they operate correctly.

But I thought these 'errors' should be noted here on this Tinkerers topic.

With 20:20 hindsight we might well have chosen a different brand than Growatt, @transparent. What you're outlined doesn't entirely surprise me but a far more practical issue is that I've got a 5kW inverter (the SPH5000) and yet it'll only pile into the battery at a maximum of 3kW. We'll continue as we are for the time being but there will come a time when we want to upgrade to a significantly larger battery and at that point we'll almost certainly change the inverter as well. Sunsynk is certainly an option we're considering as also are Solis and Fox ESS. Early days, though.

Posted by: @sheriff-fatman

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We're using a local company called M&M Blinds in Leeds, but there are many companies out there offering similar solutions, including web-based ones where you measure and fit them yourselves after delivery. 

I have used just such a supplier for window blinds with a drop of 80cm.

I'm not confident that the design of the clip which slides between glass and rubber glazing strip will offer sufficient resilience for a door glazing drop of 1.8m.

Whilst we're talking about blinds, does anyone have any good and practical ideas for some roller blinds to cope with glazing that goes up into the eaves? Ideally, I'd want to deal with above the french doors as one zone and then separate zones for each french door and each window beside the french doors.

No idea what shaped solutions are available, though, motorised or not. Don't want to spend a fortune, so if it's not cost effective we'll no doubt just leave as is.