Tip: report KaKu blinds status

Eternity

Contrary to Z-Wave, the KaKu/CoCo protocol is a 1-way communication. So, if you believe you have closed the blinds, you can not really be shore that the are indeed closed...
The problem I had, was that after a Homey reboot, my blinds would open. Don't know why, but this is annoying. If I am away I want to be sure the blinds are closed at night. As I am thinging of using the Candy App to reboot my Homey every night (to solve my Greenwave powernode problem....), I had to find a way to make sure the blinds are really closed.

Perhaps I have made something over complicated, but this works for me. If my blinds are not closed when the sun is set, I receive an email. 

I created  boolean variable in Beter Logic "Blinds are open".



In every flow that contains my blinds, I set this boolean value.

PS
I have doubled the 'close blinds" instructions, with a 60 second delay. This makes sure the blinds are really closed, even if the first command was not heard by the ASUN-650....



In a new flow, I added the instruction to email me if the boolean value is true (blinds are open) and it is night.

keverjeroen

But now you still don't know the status of your blinds? When will the variable 'keuken gordijn is open' go to true?

Eternity

Edited the post.

btw... I have not been able to use the 'value' and 'variable' tags in the email message... Any suggestions how to use these?

keverjeroen

Still the same question..  When will the variable 'keuken gordijn is open' go to true?

Eternity

Eternity

So, if I open the blinds (via Voice, a Flow or a Fibaro relay, I also set the boolean to 'true').

keverjeroen

So you still don't know the 'real' status? What if KaKu missed the signals? What if the blinds are opened after a reboot? What if they are closed because the cat jumped in to them?

JaapPelt

Thanks for the tip!

KaKu is perhaps not 100% reliable, but it is relatively cheap and it works good enough. With this tip, KaKu devices and the Homey platform become more flexible and more powerful.
I will begin adding this pattern for all my KaKu devices. It is relatively little effort and it allows for some nice future enhancements. 

Eternity

@keverjeroen ;
I agree, I wouldn't want this work around in a critical situation , but it helps me to know that the blinds status is more reliable.   


@JaapPelt ;
Nice to see someone using my suggestion