C. Scott Brown / Android Authority
I recently upgraded my rented house with a couple of SwitchBot smart home products. It was revolutionary to use SwitchBot’s various tools, including the mechanized SwitchBot Bot with the push of a button, infrared rays from the Hub Mini, temperature control through the Meter Plus, and space saving with the LED Strip Light. However, I wasn’t able to test the latest product in the company’s smart home portfolio at the time: the SwitchBot Blind Tilt.
This new device snaps onto your already existing ‘dumb’ blinds and makes them smart by allowing you to remotely control the tilt of the panels, which is ideal if you can’t or don’t want the expense of installing smart blinds. SwitchBot was kind enough to send me a set of Blind Tilts to try out.
About this article: I tested the SwitchBot Blind Tilt for two weeks. The units were provided by SwitchBot, but SwitchBot had no say in the direction or content released.
SwitchBot Blind Tilt: How Does It Work?
C. Scott Brown / Android Authority
Installing the Blind Tilt is a bit overwhelming. The box contains over a dozen components, so at first glance it might seem like it would take hours to put everything together. However, most parts are there to aid compatibility with different types of blinds, so you don’t end up having to use them all.
There are essentially two aspects to blind tilt. The first is the tipping mechanism, a tubular mechanical rotator. You snap this onto the existing tilt rod of your blinds. Gears inside grip the wand and spin it in either direction. The second aspect of the complete kit is a solar panel that connects to the tilt mechanism via a USB-C connection to provide power.
Thanks to the solar panel, I doubt I’ll ever have to manually charge the Blind Tilt.
For the first set of blinds, it took me about 20 minutes to go from opening the box to fully installing them. However, once I knew what I needed from the box and what I didn’t, subsequent blinds took less than five minutes. In less than an hour I had a blind tilt on all the blinds in my house.
SwitchBot claims that Blind Tilt works with 99% of commercial blinds, but I couldn’t test this because all my blinds are the same. However, now that I know how it works, I am inclined to believe this claim; all the Blind Tilt does is mimic a human hand by rotating the tilt bar. The only reason this wouldn’t work on a given set of blinds would be if the wand itself was too big or improperly shaped for the blind tilt.
The solar panel is a nice touch. It’s not big enough to fully charge the Blind Tilt from zero, but it offers enough trickle power to prevent you from having to charge it manually. I installed the system with 75% battery and two weeks later I’m still at 75% despite using it multiple times a day, every day. I would need more time to prove it, but I suspect I’ll never have to manually charge these. If for whatever reason you don’t want or can’t use the solar panels, charging the Blind Tilt is a major pain. You’ll either need a very long USB-C cable to reach the installed device, or disassemble it to get the device to a charger. Both ways are far more complicated than the “set and forget” nature of solar panels.
Regardless, once you have everything installed, the fun begins.
Cool things I’m doing with my new smart blinds
C. Scott Brown / Android Authority
With the SwitchBot app you can open and close your blinds from anywhere. You can also group and sync blinds. For example, you could open all the blinds in the living room at once with just one push of a button.
You can also automate opening/closing based on various factors. I have the blinds automatically close 15 minutes after sunset every evening and open an hour after sunrise every morning. In the warmer months, I use the Light Sensing feature, which automatically moves the blinds based on how much light there is in my home. This is great for reducing air conditioning costs during the California summer.
SwitchBot offers many automations and controls for blind tilts, and you can add them to your existing smart home platform.
SwitchBot also integrates with smart home platforms including Google Home, Amazon Alexa, and more (you’ll need a SwitchBot Hub to control all your blinds, which is sold separately for $39). This way I can give voice commands in my home, e.g. B. “Hey Google, open the bedroom blinds.” I’ve also created automations in the Google Home app. One I have is called “Let’s Watch a Movie,” which turns off all the lights in the house, turns on the TV, turns on the backlight on my TV, and closes all the blinds.
There’s also a SwitchBot remote (sold separately for $19.99) that you can program to do just about anything with your SwitchBot products. I set it up so that the top button opens all the blinds in the living room and the bottom button closes them. This allows guests who don’t know my voice commands to still control the blinds in the main area of the house. The blind tilt doesn’t prevent manual operation, of course, so guests could still go the Stone Age route and open each of the blinds by hand if they wanted to.
Overall, I’m very happy with the SwitchBot Blind Tilt. I wish they were a little quieter as they produce a high frequency whirring sound when turning the tilt bar. They’re not exactly cheap either – each unit costs $69.99. If you have more than four sets of blinds in your home, you will be spending upwards of $300 to retrofit them all. Still, that’s far less than you’d pay to install the best smart blinds, which might not even be an option if you rent your home like me.
While I will readily admit that smart blinds are not a major smart home investment, having them in my home has certainly helped and I recommend them to anyone who might be on the fence! SwitchBot products are available in many parts of the world including the US, Europe, Australia and more.
SwitchBot Blind Tilt
SwitchBot Blind Tilt
Retrofit any blinds • Solar powered • Smart home integration
Upgrade your “dumb” blinds and make them smart!
The SwitchBot Blind Tilt connects to the tilt rod of your existing blinds. You can then control the tilt of your blinds via an app or voice commands in your smart home, or even schedule tilts based on the time of day or the amount of light in your home.
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