BlindsMagic – The Ultimate In Smart Blinds Window Treatments

Let me provide a quick statement of how much I love these things. I live in a pretty large two story house. Each story has its own HVAC system however, my upstairs system simply wasn’t keeping up during the hottest days of summer. Every upstairs room is surrounded by attics accessible by a small door in each closet. The closets get HOT which then transfer heat into the rooms. When it gets over 90 degrees outside my air conditioner stops keeping up and the temps gradually increase upstairs. Sometimes my smart thermostats will even tell me there must be a problem.

Fortunately, (or unfortunately) we had a tree fall on the house which got us a new roof. The new roof included some attic vent fans. Additionally, I installed a smart exhaust fan in one attic compartment. The air conditioner does a much better job now but the temps can still rise albeit slightly on super hot days.

Enter Smart Blinds.

In The Box

Stupid me took a bunch of photos with no memory card in the camera. Additionally, regarding boxing and shipping I can say these are very well packaged and the blinds are protected by a clear wrap. Even better, there is a paper band near each end of the blinds which allows for easy handling while it is out of the box. Believe me when I tell you that some of these smart blinds from other companies come out of the box and basically unravel and the cords from the motor get tangled. No such issue here. Thank you BlindsMagic for this thoughtful touch.

In the box you get:

• The Blinds
• Product Manual
• Long USB Charging Cable
• Remote Control with 2 – AAA batteries
• Mounting hardware

Smart Blinds For The Win

A BlindsMagic Smart Blind can be configured to work with Home Automation instances. For example I use Home Assistant. Also, without getting too far ahead of myself let me demonstrate a few helpful automations which have helped me completely overcome my HVAC upkeep issues. I raise the blinds at sunrise, close them at sunset and here is one of my slightly more complex automations:

• When the Temperature is above 75 degrees for 2 minutes
• And if it is before sunset
• Then close the blinds

BlindsMagic Automation (click pic to enlarge)

That’s it. Conversely, when it gets hot I, or rather my home automation, automatically lowers the blinds on the sun catching side of the house.

I have one room left upstairs without smart blinds which is where my Blindsmagic Smart Blinds will be installed. Also, it is our junk room and it almost entirely encompassed by attic making it a real hot spot upstairs. This blind installation will greatly reduce my HVAC usage upstairs. And because we are seldom in there the blinds can be down all summer and up all winter. Additionally, I can set the raise and lower functions to be automated by temperature as depicted above.

BlindsMagic

I was told by my point of contact at BlindsMagic to build up a set of blinds and they would supply them to me. At no time have they tried to exercise any editorial control over this blog but I wanted to make it clear that I obtained these blinds for free with the only catch being I needed to review them on this website. Here is what I built.

Notable items are the fact they are 70% blackout and fit around the outside of the windows. There is no space for an inside mount on my windows. I also selected a Zigbee motor. Zigbee is a radio standard that does not require internet to work. It is all locally controlled and does not phone home any information from my network to some unknown server somewhere. The commands I give it stay within my home. In my opinion this is best from an Internet Of Things (IoT) security standpoint. Z-Wave and Matter are two other standards available or you can just use a remote control. I asked for and received a 6 channel remote.

Since I am tied into home automation it is far better at 3 AM to use the remote than it is to say “Alexa, raise the spare room blinds” and have Alexa scream “OK” back to me. Waking your wife up at 3AM is never a wise idea.

BlindsMagic Smart Blinds Installation

Video typically tells the story better than the written word. Here is a quick installation video and I briefly touch on writing automations in Home Assistant.

That shows just how easy it is to install the blinds.

Configuration Options

Wow. There are so many types of blinds, colors and configurable options that the only way to cover it all is simply to go to the website and start exploring.

My favorite options are the motor options. You can choose which side they are on and what type they are (Z-Wave, Zigbee, Matter, etc.). And I’d be remiss in not pointing out that they have rechargeable batteries.

I use a portable power supply to recharge mine however I also got a right side motor because there is an outlet closer to that side. Think about those kinds of details before you select a configuration. Regarding battery charging there is also a solar option available to select.

Recommendations

Just one minor recommendation. In the product manual it provides excellent steps for pairing the blinds to various Zigbee platforms such as Smart Home, Amazon Alexa, Google Home, etc.

One of the most popular home automation programs is Home Assistant, which I mentioned earlier. It is super easy to pair the Zigbee motor to Home Assistant and I cover it in the video above. My recommendation is to simply add those steps to the next revision of the product manual.

Other than that installation and operation is a breeze and these blinds are highly recommended by John’s Tech Blog.

Wrap Up

Since installing these we have had some unusually hot days here in Eastern North Carolina. And my 2nd story windows catch direct sunlight during the hottest part of the day. I have ecobee temperature sensors in every room upstairs and the junk room is the hottest of all of the rooms. This pushes the average temperature upstairs pretty high and makes the HVAC run way too much to try to keep up. And it doesn’t keep up sometimes.

Since I have installed these 70% blackout blinds in the junk room the temp has dropped dramatically and I have yet to have a day where the AC does not keep up. These BlindsMagic smart blinds have really saved the day and I’m certain next month’s electricity bill with be a bit less than average for August.

Adding smart blinds to your home allows you to automate their position to enhance heating and cooling of your home. They work and the work even better with a well thought of regimen of automations.

Yes, they cost more than Walmart blinds but Walmart blinds won’t increase your efficiency like these smart blinds will.

Get some.