Sonoff Zigbee Smart Curtain Motor
This is the new Sonoff Zigbee Smart Curtain Motor. Strait out of the box you can see the it's not look other curtain motors on the market. Traditionally curtain motors work by having 2 engines that move back and forth along the rail to open and close the curtains. Each motor controls one curtain. This means that to control a pair of curtains you require a pair of curtain engines. This then doubles the price of the project. Sonoff have come up with an excellent solution to the problem of needing to by 2 motors.
With the Sonoff Zigbee Curtain Motor one motor is enough to control 1 or 2 curtains. Instead of using the motor to move the curtain the motor is attached the end of the curtain rail and the other end of the rail has a second unit with is essentially a pully housing. The units are held to the rail using metal screw clamps. The 2 parts are connected by a beaded chain. The chain is plenty long enough for even the largest windows. The length of the chain can be adjusted too. The chain is driven by the motor and the curtains are attached to the chain with clips.
The Sonoff Zigbee Curtain Motor comes with a remote with can control the unit strait out of the box.
remote control on the left side of the image, The Sonoff Zigbee curtain motor in the center, The second pully unit on the right. The beaded chain can be seen at the top right attached to the main curtain clip, The second optional curtain clip is bottom right.
The Sonoff Zigbee Curtain Motor is powered by a battery housed within the motor. On a fully charged battery the motor should continue to run for 2-3 months but this is dependent on the weight of the curtains being motorised and the length of travel when opening and closing. The Zigbee Curtain motor does come with a long 5meter USB c cable which can be wired in permanently to keep the motor powered. However this may not be possible if there is not a power socket within reach or you may not want the cable to be visible. Sonoff have thought of this situation as well. There is an optional solar panel add on for the Zigbee Curtain Motor. This enables the curtain motor to stay charged with removing the need to run a cable to a nearby power socket.
Once the hardware is setup up the next item on the agenda is to set up the curtain opening and closing limits. To do this use the included remote press and hold the open button then release the button at the limit position you want to set. Repeat this process for the opposite limit.
Now that the limit have been set you have 2 way of controlling the curtains. either by using the remote or the curtains will even work by giving them a tug in the direction that you want the curtains to move. The motor with then sense the movement of the chain and start to open the curtains in that direction.
Next, you can go ahead and set up the curtain motor using a Zigbee hub. I set this on up on the Sonoff Zigbee Hub.
The link below will walk you through the process to pair devices on the Sonoff Zigbee Hub.
Ewelink device pairing process
From within the eWelink app the device shows up as a curtain motor and has a slider control to open and close to the percentage you would like.
Now that the Zigbee Curtain motor is paired in the app and the physical remote we have 2 different ways to control the motor. With the eWelink skill enabled in Alexa you can also control the curtain motor by voice. I would recommend setting up a routine in Alexa to make operating the curtain motor more natural as without doing this the curtain motor is detected as a dimmable bulb in the Alexa. By creating a routine you can control the curtains by saying "Alexa, open the curtains" or "Alexa, Close the curtains".
Note the percentages and power state used in the routines above. When setting these up it is not very intuitive what state the curtains should be at in order to make them take the desired action. To open the curtains the power state should be set to “On” and the closing percentage should be set to “0%”. then Closing the curtains the Power state should be set to “Off” with the closing percentage set to “100%”.
You could even take this one set further and create a routine that opens the curtains at Sunrise and closes them at sunset. Let's run through that process now:
Start by creating a new routine in the Alexa app. Click “Routines” and click the white circle with a “+” in it. This can be found in the top right corner of the screen to create a new routine.
Name the routine something identifiable. You can see below i have called the example “Sunset Curtains”
Next we need to select when we want the rotine to trigger. Select the “When this happens” option and select “schedule” from the options given.
From the schedule option you can select “at a time” or “sunrise” or “sunset”. For the example i selected “sunset”.
Next we need to select an action to be carried out when the routine is triggered. select “Add action” and select “smart home” from the options given. Find the curtain smart home device in the list. In the example we are setting the curtains to close at sunset therefore the device state to set is a power state of “off” and a “closing” percentage of “100%”. Once complete click save.
You have now created a routine that will close you curtains every night at sunset. You can go ahead and create the reverse roting to open the curtains at sunrise.
This can also be done using scenes in the eWelink. This is how you would create a sun rise and sunset scene to control the blinds.
To do this, open the eWelink app and click on “Scene” which can be found on the bottom bar of the app. Next, click the plus button right corner, (not the blue plus button in the center of the bottom bar). This will start the creation of a new scene.
The Scene creation in the app uses a “If this then that” approach so first we need to add an “If” or trigger. Press the “Add” button on the If section of the screen.
Next select “Sunrise/Sunset” as the trigger then select sunrise as the option on the next screen. once selected you can select an offset if you like then click save in the top right of the screen.
This will return you to the scene creation screen. Click the “Add” button on the “Then” section to add an action.
From the options choose “Smart Device” and then select the curtain motor name from the list.
This will then show a slide bar of the percentage that you would like the curtains open to. As this is an automation for sunrise we will open the curtains to 0% which is fully open. Then select save from the top right of the screen again.
This will return you to the scene creation screen. If you are happy with the configuration, click save in the top right of the screen one more time to activate the scene. You can then go ahead and create another scene in the same way for sunset to close the curtains.
By using one of these methods to create an automation like this you can have a "set and forget" automation that will work without any interaction.
In conclusion, the Sonoff Zigbee Curtain Motor is a supremely well designed and useful. It's great to see that Sonoff haven't been scared to move away from the curtain motor design used by other manufacturers and improve on the design. The fact that only one motor is required to motorise both curtains is a huge plus as it cuts the cost of automating curtains in half. All the desired features are included like being able to use “set and forget” automations with the curtain motors. They also have a ton of integrations too; being able to control them through the eWelink app, Alexa, the remote or even just giving them a tug in the direction you want the curtains to move.
One and only downside to the design is that there is some additional noise from the chain running over itself. This can be reduced by careful placement of the chain to reduce the noise made. All in all I'm extremely impressed with this product and it has already become a valued smart home product.
To pick up your own Sonoff Zigbee Curtain Motor follow the affiliate link below.
