Using blinds with only ONE button.

[Gast]

I've implemented using my blinds with only one button, by putting a garage door opener before the blind function block. All that needs to be done is to swap the open and close outputs, because blinds are considered to be standard open and a garage door is to be considered standard closed. But if you keep this into account, this works very well.

There's only one (small) problem. If someone has used the visualization to close the blinds, then the garage door block obviously has no knowledge of this, and the next time a button is used, it tries to close the blinds (because that is the state the garage door block thinks the blinds are in) instead of opening them. So the I have to press the button again to stop the blinds, and again to open them up. No a huge issue since the blinds have protection against this, but I think it would be a cleaner solution if I could somehow "tell" the garage door function block the state of the blinds and that it, being in the know of the correct state of the blinds now, could do the correct opposite action of the current state.

I see the blinds function block has an analog output which tells the current state of the blinds (AQp), so I'm guessing that, with the help of this output, it should be possible to provide this information to the garage door function block. Could somebody tell me how I could do this? I've added a screenshot of my current blinds programming. As you can see, one button actually controls two curtains.

Text is written in Dutch. OP means UP and NEER means DOWN. Gordijn means curtain. The reason those switch-on delays are there is because the blinds are actually curtains which use 24v motors. So I'm using a separate relay to control the curtains, because otherwise I can only control 2 curtains with one Loxone extension (= 400 euro for 2 curtains). With the additional DPDT relays, I can control eight 24v curtains for 50 euro. A much better deal.

Thanks!

[duncan]

a couple of options i can think of:

1) just use the garage block with visu set to type 0 (garage door looks like blinds up and down) but your opening and closing time have to be the same

2) keep your setup, turn off the visu for the blinds block and use the garage door block visu as above, so they dont get out of sync, and maybe attach your up and down separate inputs to the garage block rather than the blinds block

if you try to link the analog blinds position to the digital inputs open or closed, the loop doesnt function properly so i dont think thats going to work at all.

[Gast]

Thanks for the thoughts Duncan, but that's not going to work for me because I need to be able to control the curtains independently of each other as well. To save pushbuttons I'm only doing this in the visu, and use a pushbutton to control all of them together.

I'm curious, why wouldn't this work? I'm only using one curtain to orientate myself on, so the result is 0 or 1. (open or closed). Why wouldn't I be able to use this for the digital inputs?

[Gast]

Thanks for the thoughts Duncan, but that's not going to work for me because I need to be able to control the curtains independently of each other as well. To save pushbuttons I'm only doing this in the visu, and use a pushbutton to control all of them together.

I'm curious, why wouldn't this work? I'm only using one curtain to orientate myself on, so the result is 0 or 1. (open or closed). Why wouldn't I be able to use this for the digital inputs?

[K.Clemens]

just wondering.. If you close one curtain with the pushbutton on the blind block and next you want to close all curtains, then you will always be out of sync, isn't it?

[duncan]

i created your project using feedback of 0 or 1, like you said, from the analog output back to the digital inputs, but if you feed this back to the garage block the blinds dont move at all for some reason.

there was another project on the old forum showing a single button blinds design - have you searched for that? it may be that some button logic around the normal blinds block delivers what you had in mind. ill have a play...

[Gast]

just wondering.. If you close one curtain with the pushbutton on the blind block and next you want to close all curtains, then you will always be out of sync, isn't it?

Yes, indeed. But I can't control only one curtain with the pushbuttons, only with the visu. (it's set up like that, because in 95% of the cases, you need to move all curtains at once and not just one)
And even if this situation arises because I've lowered only one curtain with the visu, the I simply need to use the visu again to undo it.

But I'm guessing this should be fixable with logic as well. That somehow the system checks what curtains are completely down (status 1) or completely up (status 0), and then acts accordingly. Unfortunately this implies some real programming, and that's beyond my capabilities.

[Gast]

i created your project using feedback of 0 or 1, like you said, from the analog output back to the digital inputs, but if you feed this back to the garage block the blinds dont move at all for some reason.

For me they do move, but they don't continue remembering their status all the time. I don't know why.
There's one factor that adds to the difficulty, and that is that curtains are considered to be normally open, yet garage doors are considered to be normally closed. So all the logic needs to be reversed for this to work... This only adds to the confusion, well, my confusion anyway...

there was another project on the old forum showing a single button blinds design - have you searched for that? it may be that some button logic around the normal blinds block delivers what you had in mind. ill have a play...

I've seen that around somewhere, but currently can't find it again. It seems that with the closure of the forum, Loxone also made sure all the results got removed from Google etc. So it's difficult to pinpoint.
I do remember that it didn't make use of the garage controller, but did all the logic with analog memory and memory flags.
I'll continue searching.

[K.Clemens]

You can still search on the old forum itself

http://forum.loxone.com/enen/software/5963-one-button-shutter-control.html

[Gast]

Ah, thanks, that was indeed what I was looking for! But looking at it, I instantly remember why I never implemented it: this is way too complicated for me. I don't even completely understand what it does. eg. I don't understand why there is a switch-on and off delay.

FYI, I've included in here what the original programming was. I narrowed it down to just what I need (don't need the double and tripple clicks etc...), and also included it with this post.

My implementation doesn't work. I can see how the 'last moving direction" memory flag constantly switches between 1 and -1, and it even sets the Cu and Cd to "on" alternately, but strangely enough the relays (output of automatic blinds) don't switch on.

Edit: if I include a push switch between the AND block and the automatic blinds block, it does work. (why doesn't the switch-on pulse work otherwise???)

But now I notice that the blinds don't work like this:
push -> going down, push -> stop, push ->going up, push -> stop, etc...

no, it's push -> going down, push -> going up, push -> going down, etc...

I can't imagine this being very good for the motors of the blinds...

I think I'll stick to the garage door opener in combination with the blinds block...

[K.Clemens]

Try adding time for changing the direction of the motor. You're missing parameter Tc based on the original structure.

[Gast]

You can't see it, but it has been filled in via the menu structure to the left of the screen. Here, I've added a screenshot of the same setup, but this time in simulation mode. You can see Tc has been filled in with 3 seconds. Ok, so in the example it is 10000000 (don't know for what purpose), but I've tried that too and it doesn't seem to make any difference.

[Gast]

Hi, has anyone find a solution for this after 2 years?

I see now there is a new blind block: Automatic Blinds Integrated, https://www.loxone.com/enen/kb/autom...ds-integrated/
It does what you want: Tr=Toggle movement=Toggles the blind motion depending on last motion, but you can only use it with an air-based motor.
Is there a way to use this block with you own blind motor?

[Gast]

There is now indeed a block that does just that, and functions quite well. I ended up using the "gate" block before all that, but now I changed it to the regular blinds block. Works fine.