Blinds are great for keeping light out or letting light in on demand, but few of us appreciate having to walk over and wind them open and shut on the regular. [DIY Builder] resented this very task, so set about creating an automated system to do the job for him.
The blinds in question use a ball chain to open and close, which made them relatively easy to interface with mechanically. [DIY Builder] set up a NEMA 17 stepper motor with an appropriate 3D-printed gear to interface with the chain, allowing it to move the blinds accurately. The motor is controlled via an Arduino Nano and an A4988 stepper motor driver.
However, that only covered the mechanical side of things. [DIY Builder] wanted to take the build a step further by making the blinds voice activated. To achieve this, the Arduino Nano was kitted out with a DFRobot Gravity voice recognition module. It’s a super simple way to do voice recognition—it’s an entirely offline solution with no cloud computing or internet connection required. You just set it up to respond to simple commands and it does the rest.
The result is a voice activated blind that works reliably whether your internet is up or not. We’ve seen some other great projects in this space, too. Video after the break.
Who needs an alarm, if the noise of your automated blinds motor wakes you up before the sun does? 😅 Kidding, it looks beautifully designed!
Kinda cool but I wish they went more into depth of how the voice recognition etc works
iirc there was a post about someone doing spoken number recognition using an CH32V003. Now THAT was a hack for the ages
What an absolutely great video! Entertaining and instructional. Noisey device but I’m assuming in the area it’s located, that’s not a concerning factor.
I have a bedroom window that’s 103 inches (261 cm) wide that I’ve been looking to automate with blinds or drapes but the cost is relatively prohibitive (lol, says the guy with $3k+ invested in other “smart home” hardware).
I live in NZ and the price offered by the blind and curtain places are about 1000 nzd each. I have a mate who was building a new house and found the motors that slide into the tubing in china. Got them for about 60 each. I got one for 3d printing a bunch of adaptors for him.
I don’t move in until May, so haven’t bought it yet, but this PoE device is how I plan to automate my blinds . That way I don’t have to have it using up a power point / remember to charge the battery.
https://pocket.co/share/61479286-898f-470e-90ce-8ca67e517f9e
Yeah, better get used to offline operation. It’s the wave of the future as our neglected infrastructure degrades. :-)
Nice project and very entertaining and informative video!
Congratulations!
A/P Daniel F. Larrosa
Montevideo - Uruguay