Integrations

Shade Control Pro is compatible with off the shelf smarthubs already available in the market. We chose this approach in stead of developing our own smarthub, because in this way you can benefit of the larger ecosystems of such smarthubs.

At this moment Shade Control Pro is compatible with Athom Homey and Home Assistant. If you don’t own any of these smarthubs yet, its up to you to decide which one to choose. There is a lot of information on the internet available to compare these system. Altough both systems have their pros and cons, we usually recommend Homey for the average user, while we recommend Home Assistant for the more advanced users, as it requires much more technical knowledge to setup. On the other hand it gives you the benefit to more customizing and advanced features.

Please note, these are 3th party devices not manufactured by us, therefore we can not give any support on these devices. Please consult the manufacturers website for documentation and support. To help you get started or want more information about these smarthubs, you can read further below.

Homey

With Homey, you easily bring all your smart home devices together in one system. Control, automate and monitor your entire smart home from one app. Through the Homey app, you can access and control your home from anywhere in the world. You can also easily automate in the app with Homey Flow. In Flows, you link events together, so one action triggers another. This allows you to make your home a little more comfortable, safe, energy efficient and simply more fun!

Homey talks to over 50,000 devices from more than 1,000 different brands. This allows you to create endless Flows. You can also use Homey to get insight into your energy consumption – of your whole house, and even per appliance! This is how Homey helps you save energy. In other words, with Homey, your smart home works exactly the way you want it to.

Homey and Shade Control

Shade control Pro also work seamlessly with Homey. To do this, they communicate over Zigbee technology with one of Homey’s hubs: Homey Bridge or Homey Pro. Then, through Homey, Shade control products can work together with all the smart devices in your home. So you can make the setting for a movie night perfect with 1 push of a button. Shade control closes your blinds, your Philips Hue lights dim and go to an atmospheric color and your LG television instantly sets Netflix!

Starting with Homey

Getting started with Homey is very easy. You can already get started by downloading the app from the App Store or Play Store, and creating an account. Then you can add, control and automate Internet-connected devices such as Philips Hue lights, Sonos speakers, a Nuki lock or smart thermostats with Homey.

To connect Shade Control Pro to the Homey app, a Homey smart home hub is required: Homey Bridge ($69) or Homey Pro ($399). These hubs are so-called universal smart home hubs, which can connect devices on Z-Wave, 433MHz, Bluetooth and Infrared to the Internet in addition to Zigbee. Thus, you can use these hubs for a wide range of other brands as well. For more information about Homey, Homey Bridge and Homey Pro, and to create an account and get started, please visit homey.app.

Home assistant

Home Assistant is a free and open-source software for home automation designed to be a central control system for smart home devices with a focus on local control and privacy. It can be accessed through a web-based user interface by using companion apps for Android and iOS, or by voice commands via a supported virtual assistant such as Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa.

After the Home Assistant software application is installed as a computer appliance, it will act as a central control system for home automation, commonly referred to as a smart home hub, that has the purpose of controlling IoT connectivity technology devices, software, applications and services which are supported by modular integration components, including native integration components for wireless communication protocols such as Bluetooth, Zigbee, and Z-Wave (used to create local personal area networks with small low-power digital radios), as well as having support for controlling both open and proprietary ecosystems if they provide public access via example an Open API or MQTT for third-party integrations over the local area network or the Internet.

Home Assistant and Shade Control

To control Home Assistant with Shade Control, you need a Zigbee stick which acts as the network coordinator. There are many sticks on the market, which is impossible for us to test all. We tested our integration with the Conbee II stick. So if you are unsure which one to choose, we recommend this one.

You also need a zigbee app on Home Assistant to control the devices. We tested it with both Zigbee Home Automation and Zigbee2MQTT.

Zigbee Home Automation

The Zigbee Home Automation integration allows you to connect many off-the-shelf Zigbee based devices directly to Home Assistant, using one of the many available Zigbee coordinators.

ZHA uses an open-source Python library implementing a hardware-independent Zigbee stack called zigpy. All coordinators compatible with zigpy can be used with ZHA.

Zigbee2MQTT

Zigbee2MQTT is an open source Zigbee bridge that enables local communication with Zigbee devices via MQTT.

A community user made an integration with Shade Control. So it should work off the shelf.

Voice assistants

Do you want to control Shade Control Pro with your voice? Say “Shades up”, and let Shade Control do the rest. To make this work, you need one of the compatible smarthubs from above. On the smarthub you need to make a connection with a voice assistant. Read it below further how to do this with your favorite voice assistant.

Google Assistant

You can control Shade Control Pro with Google Assistant with either Homey or Home Assistant.
Please see the website of these device manufacturers of how to connect Google assistant with their smarthub.

For Homey visit this link.
For Home Assistant visit this link.