Leo Laporte (0:00)

Coming up on Hands on Tech, let's take a look at how we can automate and sort of combine control of multiple roller shades in a home. Stay tuned. This is TWIT.

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Leo Laporte (1:51)

Hello and welcome to Hands On Tech or welcome back. If you've been here before by now, if you have been here before, you know how this works. I've got a question that I'm going to answer a question from one of you. This question comes in from Kevin who writes I am have four remotes for four shades. Can I use some sort of automation so that I can use my phone via Wi fi to talk to these four roller shades? Here are the remotes. I do not know if they use radio or IR to communicate. So Kevin has included an image showing these remotes and it looks like there's, you know, a different kind of remote for a different device and Kevin had noted that some of them are the same. This is a picture of two of the Four. And the remaining two are similar to the square one, which I'm going to assume is the one on the left, as it has a sort of square at the top of it. In any case, I do notice that the. The one, the one remote in the image on the right has a black bar across the. What looks like the top of the remote, although it's facing toward us. And that would suggest that there's some. I are. And so in that case, I do believe that these remotes are probably, probably ir. What that means is just like a standard remote control. By the way, as an aside, it turns out that before remotes were ir, before we used infrared to control a television, there was this clever, clever technology where it's almost like the clapper for lights back in the day, where you could clap and turn the lights on, clap, turn the lights off, it would listen. And this, and this is an. As another aside, if you've ever heard your grandparents, your parents, perhaps even you, maybe your great grandparents, whomever, call the remote the clicker, there's more to just it being called the clicker than it being called the clicker because it's, you know, you. You press the button. You click the button. No, there was a little listening device inside of older televisions that listened for the click of the remote. And if it was the right frequency, then it would know I'm trying to turn the channel to a different channel or I'm trying to turn off the television. And so it would actually be. There was no, no wireless communication taking place between the remote or the clicker and the television, but instead was just a sound. So cool. And Jimmy in the, in the chat, which, hello, Jimmy, says, before your time, Mr. Sergeant? Absolutely. And then says, I was amazed by them as a kid, I'm amazed by them as an adult that that is a thing that they did. Like, that's cooler to me than I are anyway. So the problem with those is if something else made a click or made a sound that was similar in frequency to that, then it would also cause the TV to do the thing, you know, change the channel or whatever it happened to be. So that's why they kind of. One reason why they switched away from the clicker to ir. Of course, IR then enabled more ability to have multiple, you know, buttons and all that kind of thing. Anyway, very cool clickers. Awesome. So let's get back to the question from Kevin. So it appears these are ir, and that suggests that you can use an IR blaster that you can connect to your WI Fi and have that kind of control your, your roller shades. So here's the thing. There's one option which is one that I have used the Aqara Hub M2. It's a little pricey, not on its own, but we're going to get into kind of the caveats here. So The Aqara Hub M2 has a, an IR blaster built into it. It's actually, I think it's nearly 360 IR blaster. And so if you have, you know, like a great room and it's got your television and it's got a fan that has an IR receiver and you've got roller shades, you've got this and that and the other, you put that hub in that room and you can suddenly program it to control everything. And then via an app, you're able to turn on the TV and hit the lights and the fan and whatever else is controlled. Wonderful. That's one way to pull this off. But my concern is these roller shades are probably not all in the same space, right? You've probably got one in a bedroom, you've got one in, you know, another bedroom, you've got one in the living room, wherever they happen to be. So an IR blaster in one room is probably not going to be able to hit all of those spots. And that is where I recommend a different device called the Broadlink RM4 Mini. So I have used one of these in the past. I don't use a tower fan anymore, but I used to use a tower fan and I got tired of this little silly remote that was connected to it that it would always get lost somewhere. So I got one of these Broadlink devices and they're sort of a little cylinder that is, I don't know, less than the height of a tube of Chapstick, but far, far larger. There we go. Thank you. And if you're just listening, then you'll just have to keep imagining but it is an IR blaster and what it does is it you can program it to do what you needed to do. This is $30. So it's much less of an investment placing one of these in each of the spaces where these roller shades are than if you were to go the way of the Akara where you've got one of those hubs in each of the spaces that's much more expensive. Now I've link the Aqara Hub M2 package. If we could go back up to the top of that page, John. So the one that I linked to is the Aqara or Excuse me, is the Broadlink RM4 Mini, but click on the one to the right there. So you see, like the two options. Yeah, you can get the device by itself for 2599. The one that I link to and we'll link to in the show notes is a little bit more expensive, but it comes with a cord that is the power cord for it, that has a humidity and temperature detector built into the cord. And so you get this extra information. So suddenly this becomes a better investment, right? Because now you know the humidity and temperature in a room. Now suddenly this cannot just be for roller shades, but it could also be for, if you do have a fan in that room that is IR connected, right. So you can say if the temperature drops below this, lift up the shades to let some sunlight in, but also run the fan or whatever it happens to be. So I think it's worth kind of that extra little bit of money. But get one of these, put them in each of the rooms, connect them and then suddenly, yes, you can control them all from your phone via wifi because these aren't Internet connected on their own. Obviously you're not going to be able to just, you know, use shortcuts to somehow pull this off. So you do need to get something like the Aqara Hub M2, which I would recommend if all of your roller shades are in one room. But again, I doubt that's the case. So that's where the Broadlink RM4 Mini, which is much less expensive, would come in handy because you can get one of these for each of the rooms that it's in, connect them all together and then do it that way. There is also another option which is a company called Switchbot. I should note both A Cara A Q A R A and Switchbot offer these things about to talk about, which are sort of individual motors for roller shades. So you would replace the. And it would depend, of course, on your roller shade situation. If it's built into the mechanism at the top, this isn't going to be doable. But if you've got something where you know the, the chain on the roller shade is being powered by some sort of little motor, it's possible that you could replace it with one of these that would do it for you. And so then it's just one step less and you're not having to worry about ir, you would connect one to each of the spots to your roller shades and then you'd be able to rock and roll from there. So a few options for you, Kevin, in terms of being able to connect all of these shades. I would love to hear what you end up doing, what you end up going with and if you need some more assistance on that. Kevin had a secondary which we'll get to in just a moment, but I want to remind everyone listening about Club twit at Twitter TV Club twit for $7 a month you can join the club and gain access to some awesome benefits Ad free content. Yes, every single one of our shows ad free. Access to the Twit plus bonus feed that has extra stuff you won't find anywhere else behind the scenes before the show. After the show, special Club Twitt events get published there and access to the members Only Discord Server. A fun place to go to chat with your fellow Club Twit members and those of us here at Twit. On of all of that, I want to invite you to join the club because we currently have a two week free trial. So if you have yet to join the club, join us for two weeks for free. See if it's for you. I think you'll find you enjoy it and we'll see you around once those two weeks are up for that $7 a month. Thank you for your support listeners.