Motorised blinds

I have a pretty simple c-bus install at home. currently it's just my lighting via a 12 ch relay and 2 x 8 ch dimmers however I need to replace some blinds and have been looking at the motorised roller blinds on ebay. could anyone tell me what I would need from the c-bus side? would i need a shutter relay or would a normal relay be ok? would i use the control that comes with the blinds or bypass that altogether. thanks.

 

The answer there is "it depends".

If your blind motors are 240V and have 4-core cables (Active Up, Active Down, Neutral and Earth) then they can be controlled directly from a C-Bus Shutter Relay.

If your blind motors are low voltage (often 24Vdc) then you can still use a Shutter Relay. You will need two power supplies: one for up and one for down operation.

If your blind motors have their own controller, but that controller can accept dry contact inputs then you can connect those inputs to a C-Bus ELV relay unit (L5108RELVP).

Using standard C-Bus relay units to control the motors directly is generally a bad idea because it offers limited protection from accidentally activating the up and down connections to the motor simultaneously. There are ways of preventing this from happening, (search the forum) but they generally involve plenty of mucking about with logic and scenes. If you can use a Shutter Relay or ELV relay, they will make life much easier.

I suggest you have a read of the Shutter Relay installation instructions to see if it will cover your needs.

 

I bought a curtain rail motor off Ebay that advertised C-Bus compatibility. It runs on 16V and has got three ways to control it;
1. It'll learn a single IR signal: open/stop/close/stop/open/etc
2. Power cycling will do the same as above
3. C-bus contact: relay <1s will open, relay >1s will close.

As zx9 says, without knowing more about the device you're looking at, it could be anything.

 

Going by what I have seen for these units, theya re not the ones froop indicated - they were a track motor (which I have one of).

The roller blind motors are a 240VAC motor with limit switches and should only need the blind controller to work.

Mick