This README contains some details (and files) on my solution for automated sliding curtains, integrated with home-assistant.

The project here is specifically about side sliding curtains, which is very different from automating window blinds for which there are plenty off-the-shelf and affordable solutions available. Most notably the FYRTUR blinds from Ikea.

For side sliding curtains however there seem to be way less off-the-shelf products available. Most that do exist come with a bunch of trade-offs (expensive, vendor lock-in, needs another hub, too much work). I do believe this will change over the next few years, but as of mid-2020, it seems like some amount trade-off is inevitable. I eventually ended up with dumb electric curtain rails from Dooya in combination with a wifi-enabled smart relay (Shelly 2.5) that I flashed using ESPHome.

• Somfy automated curtains
• Slide kickstarter
• Xiaomi Aqara Curtains
• Full custom designed solution (reddit)
• Another customized solution (thingiverse)

I used the Dooya 52S (45W) motor with the compatible curtain rails.

To make the curtains smart, I hooked up the Dooya motor to the Shelly 2.5 which is essentially a double relay attached to the wifi-capable ESP8266 micro-controller. I then flashed the ESPHome firmware on it, after which it becomes very easy to program it and integrate it with home-assistant.

This requires an UART/Serial controller like the FTDI32.

If you have no idea what that last sentence meant, don't worry, it's not that hard and can be learned in a few hours.

Some tutorials that look good:

• https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/serial-communication/all
• https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/sparkfun-usb-to-serial-uart-boards-hookup-guide/all

I followed the instructions from Tasmota on flasing Shelly 2.5 to figure out the hardware/wiring part. It's a little tricky because you'll probably need to solder some wires onto small pins.

Shelly 2.5 pinout or UART:

• Shelly-RXD -> FTDI-TX (IMPORTANT: Shelly2.5 RX is connected to TX on FTDI!)
• Shelly-TXD -> FTDI-RX (IMPORTANT: Shelly2.5 TX is connected to RX on FTDI!)
• Shelly-3.3V -> FTDI VCC (VERY IMPORTANT: make sure to set the voltage jumper correctly on the FTDI is set to 3.3v otherwise you risk frying the Shelly)
• Shelly-RST -> Leave Open (not connected to FTDI)
• Shelly-GPIO0 -> FTDI GND
• Shelly-GND -> FTDI GND

IMPORTANT: BOTH GPIO0 and GND on the Shelly need to be connected to GND on FTDI to get the Shelly into flash mode, just doing one of them won't work.

I wired the Dooya curtain motor as documented on the Shelly 2.5 User Manual, and added a 3-pole switch as well for manual opening and closing of the curtains.

Wiring schematic:

What it looks like in real-life:

I used the curtain-opener.yaml ESPHome config file to program the Shelly to open and close the curtains. It's basically just modified a example from https://esphome-configs.io/devices/shelly-25/

virtualenv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate
pip install esphome

esphome curtain-opener.yaml run

# Set curtain opener duration to 8s (default = 6s)
esphome -s duration 8s curtain-opener.yaml run

The shelly together with all the wiring is mounted inside a simple custom designed and 3D printed enclosure. The CAD files can be found in the enclosure directory.

3D-printed and mounted enclosure with manual controls:

Link to short video clip, integrated with homeassistant: