WiFi Blinds Motor

A WiFi blind motor for the blinds you already own. If your roller, Roman or zebra blind is opened by pulling a beaded chain, this Zemismart driver clips onto the wall beside it, the chain runs over the wheel on top, and the motor does the pulling from then on. Nothing is cut and nothing is drilled into the blind.

• Where the WiFi blind motor differs from the Bluetooth one
• Do not throw the bridge away with the box
• What it fits and how it goes on
• Battery life in real use
• Which of the three drivers to buy

Where the WiFi blind motor differs from the Bluetooth one

The hardware on the wall is the same. The difference is the small white USB stick in the box, which is a bridge between the motor radio and your Wi-Fi. Plug it into any USB supply within range and the blind becomes reachable from anywhere your phone has signal.

That is what buys you schedules that run while you are at work, blinds that close before you get home, and Alexa and Google Home. Bluetooth reaches across a room. This reaches across a city.

Do not throw the bridge away with the box

It looks like packaging. It is not. Without it the driver still works from the buttons on its own body, and the app cannot find it at all, which is how people end up thinking a working unit is faulty.

Keep it plugged in somewhere central rather than behind a cupboard. It has to hear the motor and reach the router, and a bridge stuffed in a drawer does neither.

What it fits and how it goes on

Any roller, Roman, zebra or day-night blind opened by a beaded chain or cord loop. The driver mounts on the wall beside the blind with screws or the adhesive pad supplied, and the chain runs over the toothed wheel on top.

Interchangeable gears cover the common bead and cord sizes in plastic or metal. Set the upper and lower limits once and it stops in the same place every time.

It turns at about 30 revolutions a minute. Reviewers call it quiet, though no manufacturer publishes a decibel figure for it, so we are not going to invent one.

Battery life in real use

It runs on 3,000 mAh of rechargeable cells inside the unit, charged by cable. Zemismart quote up to five months on a charge. An independent reviewer running two automatic movements a day got three to four.

The solar panel that appears in some photographs is an optional extra and is not in the box. Worth adding if the blind is somewhere a charging cable will not reach comfortably.

Which of the three drivers to buy

Take this one if you want the blind to work when you are not in the room, and you do not run Zigbee. It is the version that needs nothing else bought.

If everything in the house is already on a Zigbee mesh, the Zigbee driver joins it properly, though it needs a gateway. If the blind is in a room you are always sitting in anyway, the Bluetooth driver costs less and does that job honestly. All three come from Zemismart.