Easy & Affordable Smart Blinds in MINUTES!

The Aqara Roller Shade Driver E1 is a retrofit device designed to work with your existing Blinds to turn them into Smart Blinds that can then be automated by your Smart Home no matter which platform you are using, they work with Home Assistant, Alexa, Google Home and Apple HomeKit. In this review of the Aqara E1, we talk about specs & features, battery life, ease of use and more!

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[EverythingSmartHome]

Who is already automating blinds? If so what are you currently using?

Oh and Aqara is providing a 15% discount for the next 2 days (starting tomorrow), use code RSDE1KOL at checkout!

[DfknG]

Looks good, I wish there were more solar panel top up options. 2 months is probably frequent enough to be a bit of an annoyance.

[daveclarke]

I'm currently using it in conjunction with my flashed sonoff ZigBee hub which is integrated with home assistant. I wasn't expecting it to have enough power to open and close my large kitchen blinds so blown away by it 🙂👌

[AlanLifeson]

Last October (2020) I bought the Zemismart WiFi version of their roller blind motor, it's currently £38 on Aliexpress with free 10 day shipping. It came with a remote control and power brick. So far it's been great. I use it for virticle blinds, but it does do roller blinds too. it connects to Tuya smart app so is also compatible with voice assistants. It looks exactly the same as this one. Even though it comes with a power adapter it has a rechargable battery inside that lasts for around 6 months at average usage. I also think a light sensor would be a good idea, but you could rig one up and set a routine using Alexa etc... there are a few light sensors available.

[marklewis]

I keep looking for these, I love the Aqara products, will probably get one of these. Love the fact it has buttons so can be controlled 'manually' rather than via the App which should help with the Wife Acceptance Factor

[TechTutorialsDavidMcKone]

Very good to see controllers like these with better protocol support
I bought the Soma shade controllers some time back when I started looking for some and they come with solar panels as well as a USB power cable. The ones on the south side have been running on solar ever since, but the north side ones struggled to recharge so they're plugged into a power socket I put in that has USB sockets
But...they're controlled through Bluetooth and although they can be scheduled to open and close through the app, I had bigger plans and wanted to control them through my smart hub
But...that meant I had to get their controller or build my own, which although I can run it on POE, it's an extra point of failure
It's easy enough to work with as you send it HTTP requests to open or close a blind but it's missing that 2 way feedback I would expect from Zigbee or Z-Wave. Instead it needs a bit of extra coding to request the status via another HTTP request
Interesting idea about the light sensor and oddly enough I've only just realised these ones support light level triggers but it only seems to be available as an option in the app as their controller doesn't seem to have an API option for the light level

[mil]

Great review. One thing not mentioned is how it deals with the normal join you get in the ball chain. I have a metal ball chain cord and there is a big chunky plastic joiner which would have go through where the cog wheel would be for this smart device when opening or closing the blinds. I can't see how that would feed through or how it would work around that. There's no way for me to position the joiner in any location that doesn't pass through the lowest point of the cord so it would have to go through the cog wheel. Any thoughts?

[brainz-brainz]

Just got a Zemismart curtain track. Excited to install it.

[LocostR]

I'd say you may want a little less slack in your cord to make it run more smoothly and avoid the possibility of it jumping on the sprocket.

I fitted a Zemismart mains powered unit to a roller blind in a window high up in our double height hallway where you can't actually reach the window to pull a blind cord unless you extended the cord to about 4m long dangling down to the floor! I only fitted it a couple of months ago but so far so good, I've got it set on a daily schedule to open/close at sunrise/sunset and also to close if the Tuya weather app predicts daytime temperatures of over 21c to help keep the house cool in warmer weather.

[EpicFamVlogs]

What if you don't have the beads and you only have the string pull chord? Will it work?

[shubinternet]

Hmm. Very interesting! What about wooden horizontal blinds, where you need to control both up and down as well as open versus close?

[TexSweden]

Great and straight to the point! I was planning to get the Ikea ones, but this might be both better and cheaper - better since I could leave it plugged in and cheaper overall (also more choices for the actual blind)

[airchreece]

Very useful video! Aqara products are always top quality.
I have a similar product that works with WiFi that I have flashed with tasmota.
Unfortunately after some months of good working, broke down :(
I saw that the chain of beads is not stranded. That shouldn't be, thus it could skip some beads loosing it's end positions.
I suggest that you move your motor further down or cut the chain short and connect it with a bead connector (yeah that's a thing :P)

[MatTeague]

Great video as always!! Have you had any issues once added to HA? I’ve noticed some people have been posting the up arrow in HA is greyed out so they can’t open the blinds. More so with ZHA. Have you had this issue at all?

[DIYtechie]

Great video - straight to the point. And very interesting/promising product.

[christhomas]

Nice video, which convinced me to get one. However, could you give a bit more detail on your Homeassistant integration/configuration for this motor? I've just got one of these to replace a dumb 433MHz motor, but I'm having trouble with the Homeassistant integration. I do not have an Aqara hub but I do have a Sonoff USB ZigBee 3.0 dongle, simple to pair, it's configured and working from the buttons.

[Andrey-wxji]

I understand this is a sponsored video but nearly identical devices have been around for a long time on Aliexpress with various connectivity options - i.e., Zigbee, Wifi and Bluetooth. This one is probably a rebrand/slight modification of one of those, it even looks identical to some.
I have a Zigbee one and it also works great.

[JustinWild]

Did Aqara cease production of these? I'm not able to find them for sale.

[MrHollow]

I had a different Aqara Blinds Zigbee controller in mind to automate my office blinds but i guess this is newer and better. I hope they will release a Curtain controller for the ikea rails, that would be cool.

[TheRealAnthony_real]

This should be great for the vertical blinds where you only have to turn them 90 degrees ! I believe it would also increase baterry life considerably ..