Messages

46

Tubular Motors: General Discussion / Re: Picking the right items...

« on: December 24, 2015, 02:17:37 PM »

Hi, we provide the adapter kits as a courtesy when you purchase a motor.

Please contact me directly by email through the contact form so I have a record of the discussion, and I will make sure you get the proper kit(s):

http://RollerTrol.com/contact-us

Regards, Adrian

Adrian Biffen
Customer Service
RollerTrol Automation Systems
http://RollerTrol.com

47

Tubular Motors: General Discussion / Re: Picking the right items...

« on: December 24, 2015, 12:52:48 PM »

Hi, good news, we have the 2" adapter sets.

Regards, Adrian

48

Tubular Motors: General Discussion / Re: Picking the right items...

« on: December 23, 2015, 05:37:54 PM »

Hi, I checked with our tech and he thinks he may have some that will work. I'll take a look tomorrow and let you know.

Regards, Adrian

49

Tubular Motors: General Discussion / Re: Picking the right items...

« on: December 23, 2015, 05:31:21 PM »

Hi, you actually need 3 ... one at each end (idler end and motor end where the crown roller is) and one on the drive adapter that is inside the tube.

Regards, Adrian

50

Tubular Motors: General Discussion / Re: Picking the right items...

« on: December 23, 2015, 03:51:18 PM »

Hi @eszee, in that case you already have the adapters, and if they are a bit large, often we use duct tape to build up the diameter, or we make up some shims from plastic pipe.

Regards, Adrian

51

Tubular Motors: General Discussion / Re: Picking the right items...

« on: December 23, 2015, 01:57:45 PM »

Hi @eszee, yep, looks like 2 inch tubing; of course it would be the one we don't use!

I'll see if we can get 2" adapters for you; will advise.

If I can be of further assistance, please contact me anytime.

Regards, Adrian

Adrian Biffen
Customer Service
RollerTrol Automation Systems
http://RollerTrol.com

52

Tubular Motors: General Discussion / Re: Picking the right items...

« on: December 23, 2015, 11:04:24 AM »

Hello, thanks for your interest; here are the answers (bold) to your questions about our built-in battery motors (with RF control):

- Would your TMDG-12-16-03-50-RB motor be appropriate for all four of the shades?

yes, they will work fine for those sizes ...

- Will I need to measure the ID and OD of my existing roller shade tubes?

yes, our standard size motors are made to fit industry standard Rollease style 1.5" tubing, but they can be adapted to 1.25" or 2.5" tubing ...

- I also want to order a wall mounted timer based remote control for these shades. Since all 4 shades will always be going up and down together, can I purchase your 1 Channel G Series timer controller MCGT-1W-RF, and have all 4 motors on the same channel?

sure, you can assign as many motors as you like to the timer ...

- Do your motors come with the charging adapter or do I need to order that separately?

separately, there is no need to have more than one or two chargers ...

- How often will I be charging the motors based on opening and closing the shades 2x per day?

3 to 6 months ...

- How long does it take to fully charge each unit?

a few hours, you can leave them overnight and unplug them in the morning ...

- How will I know that the motors are running low on battery? Is the a visual indicator of some kind?

they stop and beep 7 times ...

Many thanks for your help with this project!

You are welcome, thanks again for your interest ...

If I can be of further assistance, please contact me anytime.

Regards, Adrian

Adrian Biffen
Customer Service
RollerTrol Automation Systems
http://RollerTrol.com

53

Choosing a home automation system / Re: Trouble pairing with smartthings?

« on: December 18, 2015, 10:15:14 AM »

Good Morning, your points are well taken and I will review the instructions. The shades themselves may need a standoff, depending on the thickness of the roll, and I will look into this too.

Regards, Adrian

54

Choosing a home automation system / Re: Trouble pairing with smartthings?

« on: December 17, 2015, 07:33:19 PM »

Hi Robert, this is all good fodder for the search engines, they will suck it up, so no problemo, you've already made your contribution!

We value word of mouth above all, and it's why we have been so successful with a zero advertising budget.

We like the Pi because it is powerful enough that it can still be used as a general purpose computing platform (mail, browsing, spreadsheet, etc) while Stefan's excellent home automation software is running in the background as a web server.

Cheers, Adrian

55

Choosing a home automation system / Re: Trouble pairing with smartthings?

« on: December 17, 2015, 06:46:19 PM »

Good Evening, very glad to hear that. I could not find any particular problem associated with SmartThings, but I have run into that device type selection problem with Vera before, so I was interested to hear how you resolved it.

Since I couldn't give you anything concrete to go on, I ended up ordering a SmartThings hub, before I saw your most recent post. It will be good to have it since there are probably more support issues that will come up.

Personally, my favorite so far is the Raspberry Pi, we've been having fun with that:

http://rollertrol.com/raspberry-pi-shade-blind-motor-control-part1

but SmartThings looks very good too. I think the fact that Samsung is behind it is very encouraging; we use Samsung SSD's in the dozen or so laptops we have here, and they are the only drives that have never failed. Phones work well too.

Cheers, Adrian

56

Choosing a home automation system / Re: Trouble pairing with smartthings?

« on: December 17, 2015, 01:28:47 PM »

Hi, the Z-Wave module is a receiver, not a transmitter. It's SKU is DCC-ZWAVE-12R

The DCG-1R-RFT Radio Transmitter Module is what I have been referring to in this post as the group transmitter because it directly controls a pre-assigned group of blind motors. There is a setting button it it, please see this picture from part 2 of the instruction series of articles:

http://RollerTrol.com/images/controllers/rf-433/DCG-1R-RFT-radio-transmitter-650x555.jpg

When I say Press the setting button on the DCG-1R-RFT Radio Transmitter Module once, I mean the one in the above picture. Sorry for the confusion.

Regards, Adrian

57

Choosing a home automation system / Re: Trouble pairing with smartthings?

« on: December 17, 2015, 11:31:40 AM »

Hi, just to answer your previous question, there should be no mention of 'include/exclude" except within the context of the Z-Wave module. That terminology is generally only used with Z-wave devices.

The setting button on our motors does have a somewhat similar function in that it allows the motor to be paired with our remote control channels, but we try to keep the "include/exclude" terminology separated, used only for Z-Wave modules.

Our group transmitter can be used with any relay trigger module, whether it be ZWAVE, Zigbee, Control4, Crestron, Lutron or any other system, so we try to keep the terminology separate and distinct. But it doesn't always work.

Regards, Adrian

58

Choosing a home automation system / Re: Trouble pairing with smartthings?

« on: December 17, 2015, 10:41:24 AM »

Hi, for sure you cannot skip the cloning procedure to the group transmitter for the blind motors. It is essentially a roller shade single channel remote with screw terminals instead of push buttons - it can control as many motors as you like, simultaneously, just the same as a hand held or wall mount remote.

Here is a summary of the easiest way to do it:

1. Create a separate master channel for each motor (used to set individual travel limits which can be done later)
2. Clone those individual master channels that will be in a group to another vacant channel on the remote
3. Clone that resulting group channel to the group transmitter
4. Test the group transmitter with a wire jumper for OPEN/CLOSE/STOP actions
5. Set up the Z-Wave trigger module to activate the group transmitter

Tip: the flash memory is in the motors, not the remotes.

Regards, Adrian

59

Choosing a home automation system / Re: Trouble pairing with smartthings?

« on: December 17, 2015, 09:43:46 AM »

Good Morning, thanks for letting me know about the instructions link; some folks do miss that in the instructions message.

It is important to start by setting up a hand held or wall mount remote as the master unit as only the master can set the blind or shade travel limits. Just for reference purposes, here is the collection of remotes, in case you need to check on the part number of your particular remote:

http://RollerTrol.com/store/en/12-remote-control-for-motor

Did you first follow the cloning procedure to clone a channel from your master remote to the group transmitter?

Once you have done the cloning procedure, you should be able to test the blind motor(s) that were assigned to the master channel that you cloned onto the group transmitter.

With regards to testing the group transmitter, if you fasten one end of the test jumper to the N (ground) screw terminal, you then have 3 other terminal to test (OPEN, CLOSE, STOP). Just touching any one of those terminals should cause the appropriate action to occur.

If that does not work, then we need to examine the cloning procedure to see if that is happening properly. You might try the cloning procedure again, just in case it did not work for some reason.

In the meantime, I am gathering as much information as possible for the Z-Wave interfacing, but we need to get the group transmitter working first, before we get to the Z-Wave stage.

Regards, Adrian

Adrian Biffen
Customer Service
RollerTrol Automation Systems
http://RollerTrol.com

60

Choosing a home automation system / Re: Trouble pairing with smartthings?

« on: December 16, 2015, 08:20:15 PM »

Hello, I haven't yet finished looking into the relationship of the trigger module with SmartThings, but I'm wondering if you somehow missed our instructions link that was sent:

http://RollerTrol.com/z-wave-blind-motor-control-part1g

The Z-Wave module triggers our group transmitter module, and you can test the transmitter module simply by connecting a wire between the appropriate terminals (as a substitute for what the trigger relay would do).

The normal procedure is to get the group transmitter working first (you can just clone a hand held remote channel), test that, then use a trigger relay module of choice (it does not have to be Z-Wave, it could be a Control4 relay module, for instance).

It could also be some other type of relay trigger module that works with SmartThings in some other way. Our group transmitter is powerful enough to reach anywhere in a typical home, and it does not need to be anywhere near the blind motors.

The Z-Wave part of the exercise should be really simple as Z-Wave is supposed to be interoperable, regardless of the hub you use, but apparently it's not as easy as it sounds. I'll report further in the morning on this aspect of the issue.

Regards, Adrian

Adrian Biffen
Customer Service
RollerTrol Automation Systems
http://RollerTrol.com