The Most Simple & Affordable Smart Blinds

a new set of these smart blinds is going to cost you six hundred and seventy dollars to add this smart automation kit to your blinds it's going to cost you about two hundred dollars and to add this which is the sun so wand to your blinds it's going to cost you about 84 let's get started so here we have the sunset wand thank you to sensa for sending this out to me for the review so let's go ahead get this unboxed here we have some instructions and here is the wand now they do say that you can get this set up in under two minutes so let's pull this out there you can see we have the simple wand right now it's not very heavy it's very lightweight and then up here at the top you have your little hook that you're gonna attach for your tilt one there a few components to the sensor wand is here you have the attachment twist this is where you have the antenna so it can send the wi-fi signal out and then there is an option to get a solar panel so you would plug that right in there and then down here there is a light sensor so that it can detect the light and then last we have a led light indicator right there so now let's download the sunset app to get this set up the app is available on ios and android so here i've already created my account i'm now going to select add device and now it's going to guide us through how to get these installed so there are three different types of blinds that you can use this with you can use them with mini blinds you can use them with two to two and a half inch blinds or you can use them with vertical blinds at the top of your tilt wand you will find the spindle now there are a few different types of spindles that your blinds might have but this is how you will use the sensor wand to work with your blinds so first up we have the eyelet which is what i have next we have the hook and then we have the screw in my blinds do not use the hook so i'm going to need to swap out the tip end and you can easily do this with a small phillips screwdriver and that only fits on one way and then we're going to screw this back in all right now that we'll hook on to my blinds then we're going to install the batteries to put in the batteries we're just going to screw off the bottom place them inside now the batteries are said to last for one year which is just amazing with a wi-fi controlled device and next we're going to add the adapters now if you don't have an adapter this is what happens now that's not really the goal here so let me explain to you how these work so there are three types of adapters there's the left side right side and the vertical blind adapter so how do you know if it's left or right side well it just depends on your blind and how it would fit here on my blind i actually chose to put it on the left side even though i did have the pull cord in the way it ended up working out here on this other set of blinds i decided to put it on the right side because if i put it on the left side it would run into the bracket for the blind now you may be asking why don't you just turn the wand around well the wand is required to have the light sensor facing the window so in this case all we need to do is remove the spindle and then we're going to remove these two screws swap it around put the screws back in spindle back on and now it is reversed so that the line sensor is facing the window and i can have it here on the right side now to place the wand in the bracket you just push it through the slot and then you're going to rotate this part so that it snaps into place then peel off the adhesive and attach to the blind next step now it's going to scan for any sensor ones nearby we just tap here so here you're going to type in your wifi name and password all right the wand has been connected so we're going to name this sun so one one now you're going to choose what types of blinds you have so many blinds are 0.5 to 1 inch horizontal blinds would be 2 inch to 2 and a half and then you have vertical blinds so we're going to go with horizontal these are two inch blinds we need to calibrate the blind so here we're going to use the left and right arrows you have a larger small left or a large and small right and we're going to orient this until they are completely open and then we are going to do this again until they are completely closed and verifying that it worked properly did they go back to the open position no i'd push the button too much and my blinds are kind of in bad shape all right that looks pretty good yes they are fully open all right we have now calibrated so let's go ahead and close down pretty smooth let's open so now i'm going to go ahead and set up the other blind and then we'll connect these to our voice assistants now if you do need to manually rotate these you can unclip them from the adapter you can rotate them manually and then clip them back in but you will need to calibrate before you reuse them now i did have some problems calibrating this set of blinds just because the blinds are so old they kept slipping when i get them too tight so i ended up taking them down doing some adjusting and fixing this little piece so that it could then grip tight and that seemed to help a lot better and then i just went through the calibration process again to get them working correctly so once you have multiple blinds in here you can create groups so here i have my bay door group so if i open this up it gives me the option to close up open or close down so let's go ahead and open both of them at the same time and there you can see they work in unison now if one was set to a different position than the other it will take a little bit longer to get to the same position then you also have the option right here on the blind if i want to open it by a certain percentage i can do that so you just drag to what percent you want and let go so if i want it to open i can go there or if i want it to close a hundred percent so it's 10 increments from 0 to one hundred so let's go back to one hundred percent closed next we have the option to create schedules so here i have a schedule where every day at eight am i want them to open the blinds so i need to make sure that i turn that on so here 8 am mountain standard time it's going to repeat every day set to open both devices now let's say we want to add another schedule for the evening so let's see we're going to set the schedule let's just say 9 pm here we're going to choose our time zone and then the days of the week that we want this to repeat and then we're going to choose the position that we want them in i want them in the closed down position so we're going to select save and then we're going to select our windows and here we're going to make sure that is active so now it's going to automatically open up every day at eight and it's going to close every day at 9 00 pm pretty easy to use in the device settings itself you can see down here it shows battery life percent we're connected and it's showing the temperature so right now it's saying it's 87 degrees now the ability to use the light sensor and be able to adjust by the temperature of the room will be coming in a later update here in the settings you have the option to adjust the name of the blind you can then come in here and also calibrate the device if you need to so now the last thing to do is connect this with our smart assistants so this is compatible with amazon assistant and google assistant so for amazon we're going to head into the amazon alexa app and then we're going to go to more we're going to select skills and games and here we're going to search for sunset then we're just going to enable to use and sign in to our account and here we have bay door bay door left and bay door right so it created a group one and then it created one for each individual blind so if we select on our group here we can set the position we have open and then you have all the way to ninety percent or you have closed so let's go ahead and select open and now that is active and on the individual blind you have the option to do the same so you can open or close or set a percent open and then you can add these into groups and certain things alexa close bay door and that is actually pretty quick to respond and now let's set it up with google assistant in the google home app i'm going to select plus we're going to select setup device works with google and then we're going to search for sunset link our account and down at the bottom of the home page we see bay door and then we see bay door left and bay door right so i'm just going to go ahead and add the bay door into my kitchen and i'll go ahead and add the other two as well now in the google home app you don't have the option to adjust this here but let's ask google assistant open bay door sure opening bay door now because these are understood as window treatments you can also say close blinds and these can also be added into google routines where you can have it automatically open and close the blinds right from the google home app as well now if you had one of these on all of your blinds it might look something like this this certainly saves me a lot of time every day opening and closing blinds now these will work on many different sizes of blinds if you have a large blind it just might use up a little bit more battery so after using the sensor wand for a few days i'm extremely impressed by what it can do let's start by talking about some of the minor issues that it may have so first off if your blinds are not in great shape there might be some slipping whenever you try and close it really tight well for mine it did have that problem and i just went through and kind of fixed the wand there was a little clip missing so i made it a little tighter and then i went through the recalibration process again and i had much better success it was able to get the blinds as tight as i want them and loosen them and to open without having to recalibrate them at all so as long as your blinds are in good shape you shouldn't have an issue there now the second minor issue i did have is sometimes it takes a little bit longer than i'm used to to connect to the sunso one now talking with sensa they're working on improving this so it's going to be a little bit faster over time but if you're trying to change the blinds sometimes it takes a few extra seconds to change them or if you ask your voice assistant it just takes a little bit longer but sometimes it would be quick so it's just kind of here and there but it does always connect and complete the command that you want to have done now i also noticed this when setting it up i changed the wifi and came over here to my parents house and it did take a bit to get working you can factory reset these just by holding a paper clip in the little hole here for three seconds factory reset it and then you can connect it to a new wi-fi if you do need to do that now other than those minor issues that i've had i think these are a really great product for that price you could either go and buy one of those other types of blinds that i mentioned in the beginning or you could fill an entire room for the same price with the senso wand and maybe there will be a minor issue here or there but i know sunset is working hard to build out this platform that's going to work with many different smart home integrations so right now it only works with google assistant amazon assistant but over time they're going to keep adding different smart home integrations so it can work with whatever smart home you are using and then over time they're also going to add the ability to use the light sensor and the temperature sensor built into the device so that you can have more advanced automations within your own home now let's talk about the sound so compared to the other blinds here's the most expensive these are definitely the quietest the mid-range [Applause] these ones are quite loud especially when there are multiple ones working together and the sense of wand [Music] and the sun swan isn't too bad it does have a little bit higher pitch sound than the others now after using a few different smart blind options i think this is a really great way to go just because of how easy it is to get installed and set up and the maintenance is pretty low then you only need to go and change out the batteries maybe once a year and later they will have a solar panel as well that you can plug in if that is an option you're looking for so if you have any further questions about the santa wand please let me know in the comments below and if you want to support them make sure you check out the link in the description below to go and pick up your own pair again right now about 84 is how much you can get one of these for and if you want to see my other reviews of the smart blinds that i've done you can check out the videos right here thank you so much for watching we'll see you on the next one

Channel: Tech With Brett

Views: 155,937

Keywords: Tech With Brett, Sunsa Wand, Smart Blinds, Smart Blinds Conversion Kit, Google Assistant Smart Blinds, Amazon Alexa Smart Blinds, smart blinds review, retrofit smart blinds, ikea smart blinds home assistant, easy installation smart blinds, tilt wand smart blinds

Id: WOTU6KJR2MQ

Length: 13min 22sec (802 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 26 2021