Sometimes the sun is my friend, warming the house on cool days. Other times it’s my enemy, warming the house on hot days. Blinds are one solution to this problem, but it seems that no matter how I set my blinds before I leave for the day, the weather changes and I come home to a sweltering or freezing house.
So I built this mini blind minder to open and close them automatically. It’s powered by an Arduino microcontroller, which uses a temperature sensor to read the room temperature and then activates a servomotor to open the slats when it’s too cool and close them when it’s too warm. It has an adjustable thermostat and it can also be operated manually to open or close your blinds with a push of a button.
You’ll solder a custom Arduino “shield” — a circuit board with headers that plug into the Arduino — and then mount it all in a tidy RadioShack project case. This project requires only a moderate amount of soldering, so you can easily build it in a day or a weekend.
“the servo” ? What servo? Where does one get one? How about a parts list with supplier info?
There is a detailed parts list at the top right of the page.
Parallax Continuous Rotation Servo
Model: 90008 | Catalog #: 273-457
It’s not obvious that the equipment list scrolls and there are more elements than are visible at first blush/view – at least on my mac where scrollbars are set to only show when scroll.
Why not show how to put the “arduino” on the pcb, the cost is about 5-6 bucks and is about as much soldering as the shield and you get to keep your 30 dollar prototyping arduino for prototyping other ideas. here is a guide, just take the circuit and solder it to the proto board: http://aeturnalus.com/robotics/poor-mans-breadboard-arduino/
If that’s how you want to do it, do it. WIth Arduino projects people can accomplish their goals any way they want.
Nice project. I’ve wanted to do the same thing for years.
how does the servo spin the wand usually you have to twist the wand how well does it do that
Emagine this:
You have rope hanging from the roof, you grab it with one arm in the way that your arm is perpendicular to your body and you start to spinn around yourselfe. Wath would be the outcome of that ?
A: rope gets twisted, but if the rope var solid (plastic -composit) it will refuse to get twisted and turns.
You get the analogy?
This is really a nice nifty thingy, we have blinds at our home, and this gives a nice idea of custom hardware we can introduce for a domotica project I’m developing together with a friend.
This project is a fantastic one,that really hit a so many mind this so great.
I downlod the arduino sketch ,but it did not open and it shows message that it can not open
There is no such thing as an “Arduino microcontroller”!!!!
Yes, there is..google is your friend….
Great project. It could do with a light sensor to reverse the logic at night though.
Good idea. It does have a manual switch, but adding the light sensor functionality shouldn’t be too hard.
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Hello !
Nice project, I think it’s not an elegant solution with ruberband doh. Maybe a hole on the top so that you can put the stick in it? it would be more clean design and more efficent and the construction will live longer. You also decrease momentum wich alows you to save on the energy.
If you are conserd about when thing go wrong, you can use a condition on the maximum voltage (V+v) in the scrip, wich correspond to the amout of work needed (V) turn the stick in the proper angul and initial acceleration (v).
You could also use another case that is much longer and much smaler. The box could be installed at the top of window insted and exposed with one side to the sun. In this way it could have sensor that massures intensetiy of the light and also the temperatur in the room and can work with both inputs to be more efficent. I the same time it could oprate directly on the gears at the top witouth even be seen.
Hey, love the project but im wondering is theres a way you could add more than one blind so you could have a servo in a different location and just wire them together on a Y connect so it splits the signal and what one does the other does too? also, how do you limit the servo so they dont twist too far
I think you can limit the servo’s rotations in the calibration step, or the Micro 10 K-OHM potentiometer.
Steve- I just threw in $125 for the weekend project “Mini Blind Minder” before realizing it wasn’t really realistic for me. And this is where I came up with a mod that would make the project optimized for bedrooms. The project right now is ideal for kitchens, or living rooms, but in a bed room, you may want your blinds to close when it gets dark, so people can’t see in. Instead of using a TMP36 sensor, why don’t you use a photoresistor attached to jumper leads? That way, when the light levels lower, it slowly closes your blinds. I’m in 7th grade, and still a long way from the skills of Make:’s editors, so I was wondering if you guys would help me come up with a way to do this… and I’m sure other Makers would love to see this mod too. If you can help me, please let me know. Thanks a lot guys! (And keep up the good work! :) Hopefully a lot more to come!)
Thanks,
Eli Safaie-Kia
Los Angeles, Califoria
Is there anyway to either open or close the blinds from the Arduino Serial Monitor, using a command, or attaching an IR receiver to you could use a remote? Also, how do you change the threshold or preferred temperature? Thanks!
where is the schematic and program thanks
do you think that I could use a LM35 temp sensor insted of the TMP36?
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