Blinds are great for blocking the sun, but opening and closing them can be tiring in this computationally advanced age. [The Hook Up] Instead, he decided to automate his home blinds, connecting them to the Internet of Things with some common off-the-shelf parts.
The original idea was to use a stepper motor to turn the tilt rod that opens and closes the blinds. An initial attempt to open the blinds with a unipolar stepper motor proved unsuccessful, while weak motors were not able to close the blinds completely when they were running at 5 volts. The motors were converted to bipolar operation because they did not want to throw away the hardware. They were then attached to the DRV8825 driver board and operated at 12 volts to provide more torque.
The electromechanical aspects of the items were arranged, it was easy to attach the motor drivers to a NodeMCU based on ESP8266. The IoT-ready device makes it easy to control the motor remotely via the web.
The build cost less than $ 10 per blind. This is a good savings on commercial options that can cost hundreds of dollars in comparison. We have seen other works from [The Hook Up] Even before that, his creative flex seal was like a screen build. Video after the break.