# Hunter Douglas PowerView shades & blinds



## wkearney99

I've got 15 of the new PowerView shades, in four rooms. It's a newly built house (no old materials or RF-blocking lead paint). It's 3 stories, including basement, with a mostly open floorplan. 

The mesh RF setup is uneven, at best. But then I'm only a few days into owning them. I expected a bit of rearranging was going to be necessary. The hub (their RF-to-ethernet bridge) had to be moved up to the Master Bedroom (along with a Tivo, wired Chromecast, Amazon FireTV and other gear). I've got their repeaters in the other rooms. The repeaters are positioned such that they're in-between the shades for that room and the hub. As in, upstairs shades -> hub -> repeater -> 1st floor shades. 

The initial experience is, to be kind, uneven. If I use the PowerView remote (the pebble) to manually join the shades to it that seemed to work. But in the master bedroom one of them has decided not to answer to the remote. Likewise, two of the five in the living room don't seem to want to respond consistently. 

The app on iOS is not great. For one, it has NO SECURITY AT ALL. Nor does it have a non-editing mode. Right, so anyone with access to my WiFi network has the ability to do ANYTHING to the setup of the hub! Who the Hell thought this was a good idea? Ok, so that's BAD. But to make things worse, there's no read-only mode. So I can't put the app on anything accessible to anyone else in the house. At least not without risking someone accidentally making unintended changes to the configuration.

There's also no technical information accessible for troubleshooting. No way to tell the strength a given device has to the RF network. So placement of the hubs and repeaters is pretty much blind hit-and-miss guesswork.


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## heatseeker

Hey, now that you've had them for a few weeks, any different feelings?

I'm looking to get a few Hunter Douglas honeycomb shades and thinking of making the master bedroom one with powerview.


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## Mysticeti

To echo Heatseaker's request... Any updates?

Thanks!


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## wildta

wkearney99 said:


> There's also no technical information accessible for troubleshooting. No way to tell the strength a given device has to the RF network. So placement of the hubs and repeaters is pretty much blind hit-and-miss guesswork.


Mind if I ask you how much of an add-on did the motors cost versus manual? My local guy wants to charge $260 per motor. Seems pretty steep but it's nice to not have have to run power to the windows as well as smart control.

What kind of max distance are you getting with the repeaters? I know it's tough since every house is different but any description of the distance would be helpful to me since I know I will need at least one repeater, if not then two.

Has anyone tried Eneloops in one of these Hunter Douglas battery wands? Their site says they recommend using Alkaline and not rechargeables but it'd be nice to hear real user experiences.

One more thing, I read your Android app review. I'll follow up with a similar review so we can gain some traction and getting them to implement some changes. As a related question, is there a feature to do randomized for security purposes?


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## wkearney99

wildta said:


> Mind if I ask you how much of an add-on did the motors cost versus manual? My local guy wants to charge $260 per motor. Seems pretty steep but it's nice to not have have to run power to the windows as well as smart control.
> 
> What kind of max distance are you getting with the repeaters? I know it's tough since every house is different but any description of the distance would be helpful to me since I know I will need at least one repeater, if not then two.
> 
> Has anyone tried Eneloops in one of these Hunter Douglas battery wands? Their site says they recommend using Alkaline and not rechargeables but it'd be nice to hear real user experiences.
> 
> One more thing, I read your Android app review. I'll follow up with a similar review so we can gain some traction and getting them to implement some changes. As a related question, is there a feature to do randomized for security purposes?


I'm just going with the supplied Energizers. We'll see how long they last. The wand/container for them makes it pretty easy to replace them. I'm only a two months into using them, with daily scheduled changes, and they're still going... and going... (heh, advertising jingles...)

The security stinks, no replies from them on the issue. Granted, it's only an issue if someone knows enough to a) break into your wifi network and b) knows what kind of blinds you're running. So make sure you're not using an open WiFi network for accessing the hub.

This could be a real problem if you have kids with access to devices that can run the apps. There's absolutely no way to prevent access to any subset or group of shades. Anyone with the app, on the network, can do anything & everything to the shades and their configuration. *THIS IS BAD*. There's no way to prevent someone from 'accidentally' screwing around with the schedules. 

Without some sort of 'scope' or something that shows the RF strength numbers I don't have any idea how to determine coverage. Mine is new construction (stick frame, drywall, wood floors) and I've got a repeater dongle between 12' and 25' from the hub to the various shades. Hub is in the master bedroom upstairs, repeater about 18' out the hall and down in the stairway (glad I put that outlet there). Next repeater is about 12' away (covering shades within 15' of it) and the last one is about 25' (within 10' of the shades in that room). It's a relatively open floorplan, but for the one with the 25' gap there's at least two drywall stud walls between them (on the same floor). The last repeater is also about 25' distant. 

It has been very nice having scheduled control over the shades. The black-out shades in the master bedroom serve as a second alarm clock! When my child's old enough for me not to worry about having shades get wrecked I'm definitely going to consider changing the manual ones to automatic. 

We almost never use the manual controls. Their wall-mount for the remote is on my to-do list for purchasing. The hand-held pebble is nice but doesn't lend itself to being stuck on the wall with 3M strips. 

Had I not needed top-down/bottom-up shades (which we absolutely love) I would not have gotten Hunter Douglas. The lack of app network security, lack of tools for coverage and need for repeaters really makes them less appealing than, say, Lutron's offerings. With Lutron I'd at least have been able to capitalize on the existing RF network that handle my lighting, gotten their app security and not had added repeaters all over the place.


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## wildta

wkearney99 said:


> I'm just going with the supplied Energizers. We'll see how long they last. The wand/container for them makes it pretty easy to replace them. I'm only a two months into using them, with daily scheduled changes, and they're still going... and going... (heh, advertising jingles...)
> 
> The security stinks, no replies from them on the issue. Granted, it's only an issue if someone knows enough to a) break into your wifi network and b) knows what kind of blinds you're running. So make sure you're not using an open WiFi network for accessing the hub.
> 
> This could be a real problem if you have kids with access to devices that can run the apps. There's absolutely no way to prevent access to any subset or group of shades. Anyone with the app, on the network, can do anything & everything to the shades and their configuration. *THIS IS BAD*. There's no way to prevent someone from 'accidentally' screwing around with the schedules.
> 
> Without some sort of 'scope' or something that shows the RF strength numbers I don't have any idea how to determine coverage. Mine is new construction (stick frame, drywall, wood floors) and I've got a repeater dongle between 12' and 25' from the hub to the various shades. Hub is in the master bedroom upstairs, repeater about 18' out the hall and down in the stairway (glad I put that outlet there). Next repeater is about 12' away (covering shades within 15' of it) and the last one is about 25' (within 10' of the shades in that room). It's a relatively open floorplan, but for the one with the 25' gap there's at least two drywall stud walls between them (on the same floor). The last repeater is also about 25' distant.
> 
> It has been very nice having scheduled control over the shades. The black-out shades in the master bedroom serve as a second alarm clock! When my child's old enough for me not to worry about having shades get wrecked I'm definitely going to consider changing the manual ones to automatic.
> 
> We almost never use the manual controls. Their wall-mount for the remote is on my to-do list for purchasing. The hand-held pebble is nice but doesn't lend itself to being stuck on the wall with 3M strips.
> 
> Had I not needed top-down/bottom-up shades (which we absolutely love) I would not have gotten Hunter Douglas. The lack of app network security, lack of tools for coverage and need for repeaters really makes them less appealing than, say, Lutron's offerings. With Lutron I'd at least have been able to capitalize on the existing RF network that handle my lighting, gotten their app security and not had added repeaters all over the place.


Sounds like I'm going to have to purchase a lot more repeaters than I had originally though. Ugh!

Thank you for your response!


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## wildta

wkearney99 said:


> ...The lack of app network security, lack of tools for coverage and need for repeaters really makes them less appealing than, say, Lutron's offerings. With Lutron I'd at least have been able to capitalize on the existing RF network that handle my lighting, gotten their app security and not had added repeaters all over the place.


Sounds like I'm going to have to purchase a lot more repeaters than I had originally thought. Ugh!

Thank you for your response!


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## notek

wkearney99 said:


> With Lutron I'd at least have ... gotten their app security


I was with you up till this point. Where have you found any security in Lutron's app? Anyone with a phone or iPad can get a Lutron app and change all your keypad scenes and schedules - about the same "security" as in Hunter Douglas' offering.


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## wkearney99

When I setup the Lutron app for my radio ra2 gear it does require setting up username and password on the main repeater. So while it is using the telnet protocol, in the clear over the wire, it does at least control access. That and the app does block homeowner edits if you choose that setting.

I don't have any shades associated with it but it would seem reasonable to assume that since they are joined to the same repeater and controlled by the same app there be the same username and password security associated with it.

As for Hunter Douglas repeaters, I'd suggest you clear it ahead of time with your installer or reseller that you may need to return some of the repeaters. That's how my installer handled it. They brought along about a half dozen and I think I'm only using four.


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## notek

wkearney99 said:


> When I setup the Lutron app for my radio ra2 gear it does require setting up username and password on the main repeater. So while it is using the telnet protocol, in the clear over the wire, it does at least control access.


That was true, long time ago, not anymore. I think since firmware version 6.0 or so main repeater no longer needs manual username/password configuration - app connects to it automatically. It works this way with HomeSense app too.



> That and the app does block homeowner edits if you choose that setting.


Well, that isn't real security, but yes, it does limit access somewhat. It would stop any 2 year old but probably not any 6 year old.

Hunter Douglas app though is really bad, really hard to use and those buttons are hard to tap. I don't have to deal with it anymore though after I integrated control (and scheduling) into my RA2 setup.


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## wildta

Anyone here know how to set the top/open stop limit of these Hunter Douglas Powerview roller shades? I've only been able to find instructions on how to set the bottom/closed stop limit via 



. I've tried the opposite by hitting the open button instead of closed using the same instructions but it's not working. It's pretty unbelievable that Hunter Douglas would not include these basic instructions for the consumer--makes me wonder what else they left out such as security protocols. 

It's Sunday so I thought I'd ask the forum instead of waiting to call my installer or HD. Any help would be greatly appreciated.


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## Deane Johnson

wildta said:


> Anyone here know how to set the top/open stop limit of these Hunter Douglas Powerview roller shades? I've only been able to find instructions on how to set the bottom/closed stop limit via youtube. I've tried the opposite by hitting the open button instead of closed using the same instructions but it's not working. It's pretty unbelievable that Hunter Douglas would not include these basic instructions for the consumer--makes me wonder what else they left out such as security protocols.
> 
> It's Sunday so I thought I'd ask the forum instead of waiting to call my installer or HD. Any help would be greatly appreciated.


I think the top limit is set automatically by the shade itself. Check the instruction book that comes with them.


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## wildta

Deane Johnson said:


> I think the top limit is set automatically by the shade itself. Check the instruction book that comes with them.


You're right it does automatically set the top limit. It'd be nice if the instructions stated that. Thanks!


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## wkearney99

wildta said:


> You're right it does automatically set the top limit. It'd be nice if the instructions stated that. Thanks!


The 'instructions' are barely more than marketing brochures. I'd love to see actual training manual instructions. It's very disappointing there's no tools at all for doing ANY kind of signal strength measurement. Instead it's just hit-and-miss putting repeaters all over the place.


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## Neurorad

I'm surprised you haven't pushed to obtain more H-D install/spec sheets/manuals. Installer difficult? Have you tried to sign up as an installer? Probably very well protected, but no harm in trying.


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## Jasonn B

I have powerrise 1.0 and 2.0 shades. I love the 2.0 shades. Has anyone had those and then get to try the new PowerView? Thoughts?


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## ryan2112

I recently bought these shades and I love the fact that I can configure the app myself. I love adjusting the scenes and the namin ETC myself without need to call the dealer. However the overall system is buggy. If I add 3 shades to a scene, 2 out of the 3 may work but the 3rd just ignores me. It works fine if I talk directly to it. I then "recalibrate it" and it works for a day or so. My hub distance isn't the issue becaus I can jog each shade no problem. Seems like there is an internal mapping glitch for scene memory. Dealer says HD claims all scenes are stored in the hub. I thought I read all scenes are stored in my app. 
I've talked to other people with Power View. Same experience. Works one day doesn't work he next. Waaaaay too expensive to be this unreliable. I'm hopeful for an app update which they have pushed out every month or so. Sure HD knows of the issue. Just waiting for them to fix it.


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## wildta

ryan2112 said:


> I recently bought these shades and I love the fact that I can configure the app myself. I love adjusting the scenes and the namin ETC myself without need to call the dealer. However the overall system is buggy. If I add 3 shades to a scene, 2 out of the 3 may work but the 3rd just ignores me. It works fine if I talk directly to it. I then "recalibrate it" and it works for a day or so. My hub distance isn't the issue becaus I can jog each shade no problem. Seems like there is an internal mapping glitch for scene memory. Dealer says HD claims all scenes are stored in the hub. I thought I read all scenes are stored in my app.
> I've talked to other people with Power View. Same experience. Works one day doesn't work he next. Waaaaay too expensive to be this unreliable. I'm hopeful for an app update which they have pushed out every month or so. Sure HD knows of the issue. Just waiting for them to fix it.


I'm having the same issue. Just had my Power View hub installed a couple weeks ago and some scheduled scenes work while other don't at all! I feel like I've done every trick in the book to troubleshoot and I still can't get it to work. If you have time, please make sure to rate the app negatively with these issues in their App Store and call HD to complain. Perhaps with enough complaints and one-star reviews, we will get this addressed otherwise it defeats the purpose of the hub!


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## desmolift

wildta said:


> I'm having the same issue. Just had my Power View hub installed a couple weeks ago and some scheduled scenes work while other don't at all! I feel like I've done every trick in the book to troubleshoot and I still can't get it to work. If you have time, please make sure to rate the app negatively with these issues in their App Store and call HD to complain. Perhaps with enough complaints and one-star reviews, we will get this addressed otherwise it defeats the purpose of the hub!


+1, I just had 10 powerview shades installed without the hub. I am controlling the shades with the Pebble remote only and have very similar issues. The All function is very unreliable missing random shades. Also twice I had to power cycle two different shades as they became unresponsive, by unplugging the battery pack. Do you think possibly, the issues are with the shades and not the hub, network, etc.?


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## Tonomeis2

I'm having the same issues. I have 6, soon to be 8, of the PowerView solar shades and they have been buggy since a few days after the installation. The hub app, scene and scheduling setup was easy enough but the operation after a few days seems to have a mind of its own. Shades won't operate at times. Other times it will bypass the close limit to the end of the roller so a lot of the shade is bunched on the floor. I will be contacting HD with my complaints about the product and also give the app the rating is deserves for now. Hopefully they will get there stuff together soon.


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## wildta

desmolift said:


> +1, I just had 10 powerview shades installed without the hub. I am controlling the shades with the Pebble remote only and have very similar issues. The All function is very unreliable missing random shades. Also twice I had to power cycle two different shades as they became unresponsive, by unplugging the battery pack. Do you think possibly, the issues are with the shades and not the hub, network, etc.?


It's possible the issues are with the shades but you would not be able to know unless you received a replacement roller. I had an issue with one of my units where I swapped out battery packs, even though batteries were fresh, and that fixed the issue on one of them. The battery pack may have been defective, which is kind of a surprise for such a basic item.

Btw, it might be worth posting your issues on their Facebook and Twitter feeds:

https://www.facebook.com/HunterDouglas/

https://twitter.com/HunterDouglas


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## desmolift

wildta said:


> It's possible the issues are with the shades but you would not be able to know unless you received a replacement roller. I had an issue with one of my units where I swapped out battery packs, even though batteries were fresh, and that fixed the issue on one of them. The battery pack may have been defective, which is kind of a surprise for such a basic item.
> 
> Btw, it might be worth posting your issues on their Facebook and Twitter feeds:
> 
> https://www.facebook.com/HunterDouglas/
> 
> https://twitter.com/HunterDouglas


I have held back payment until they work. We tried battery pack swaps, and fresh batterries. The failures are very random across the shades. I believe they have an engineering issue with the rf signals causing the shades to randomly miss signal as if the signal strength is not good. But this happens when directly in front of the shades. Until it works correctly with the pepple remote, it's not likely to work with the hub. Unless, the hub has a stronger signal....but from reading this thread it seems to have the same issues.


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## notek

desmolift said:


> I believe they have an engineering issue with the rf signals causing the shades to randomly miss signal as if the signal strength is not good. But this happens when directly in front of the shades.


Yes, it is a known issue with their bridge. Even if you install repeaters, sometimes shades miss a RF signal. The easiest workaround is to repeat the command. Let's say you have a scene to trigger in the morning at 7:00am. You just setup it to trigger this scene again at 7:00:15am. It is not pretty, but it does solve the reliability issue.


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## wkearney99

I have to imagine there's something in the hub that could show signal strengths or other stats. I realize this isn't something most folks would need, but for the select few that are having problems it would be of TREMENDOUS HELP. 

I'd imagine there must be some HD engineers out there working on these, and I trust they mean well, but someone in management must really be bungling what they're trying to create.

Otherwise I have to say that unless you need something only the HD shades can provide (like top-down) you'd be FAR BETTER OFF going with Lutron shades instead. Had they been available I would *not have considered* HD shades AT ALL. One of the newest features of Lutron shades is the ability to see battery levels in the app (or via a programming API). Lutron's RF connectivity is second-to-none (the best) and requires none of those flimsy repeater gizmos. So unless you've got your heart set on Hunter Douglas... run away and look at Lutron's shades instead.

Meanwhile, though, the ones that DO work have continued to do so, reliably and on schedule, several times a day.


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## wkearney99

notek said:


> Yes, it is a known issue with their bridge. Even if you install repeaters, sometimes shades miss a RF signal. The easiest workaround is to repeat the command. Let's say you have a scene to trigger in the morning at 7:00am. You just setup it to trigger this scene again at 7:00:15am. It is not pretty, but it does solve the reliability issue.


The inexplicable part is some of the shades that don't react are pretty much the same distance from the hub or nearby repeaters! That and I've moved the hub and repeaters around a bit and the problem shades continue to have trouble. The aggravating thing is it doesn't happen all the time. It's not directly repeatable or consistent. 

This is where having some kind of troubleshooting tools would be a LOT OF HELP!


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## desmolift

wkearney99 said:


> The inexplicable part is some of the shades that don't react are pretty much the same distance from the hub or nearby repeaters! That and I've moved the hub and repeaters around a bit and the problem shades continue to have trouble. The aggravating thing is it doesn't happen all the time. It's not directly repeatable or consistent.
> 
> This is where having some kind of troubleshooting tools would be a LOT OF HELP!


After reading through the replies here.... My guess is the rf receiver within the shade is not reliably locking on to the rf signal. This would explain why the shade randomly fails to communicate with the Pebble Remote and the Hub/Bridge regardless of distance/placement. You say this is a known issue, has HD confirmed this issue? Also do you know if the repeaters work with the Pebble Remote, or only with the Hub/Bridge?


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## wkearney99

desmolift said:


> After reading through the replies here.... My guess is the rf receiver within the shade is not reliably locking on to the rf signal. This would explain why the shade randomly fails to communicate with the Pebble Remote and the Hub/Bridge regardless of distance/placement. You say this is a known issue, has HD confirmed this issue? Also do you know if the repeaters work with the Pebble Remote, or only with the Hub/Bridge?


There's no decent documentation available anywhere that explains what goes on between the shades, the hub, repeaters and remotes. Near as I can determine the shades speak to both the hub and the remotes independently of each other. That is, the remote is paired to the shade directly and the hub has no idea they're present. At least nothing in the app gives any indication of the remotes being present.

I am not using the remotes out of the room that has the shades. So I don't know if the remote would take advantage of the repeaters or not. I'll see if I can give it a try later today. I'll take the master bedroom remote downstairs and see if the commands from it make it back up to the shades. The trouble is I don't have any way of knowing whether the command would be going through the repeaters or directly to the shades by way of RF 'luck'. I don't think the LED on the repeaters ever lights up when a remote is being used.


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## desmolift

wkearney99 said:


> There's no decent documentation available anywhere that explains what goes on between the shades, the hub, repeaters and remotes. Near as I can determine the shades speak to both the hub and the remotes independently of each other. That is, the remote is paired to the shade directly and the hub has no idea they're present. At least nothing in the app gives any indication of the remotes being present.
> 
> I am not using the remotes out of the room that has the shades. So I don't know if the remote would take advantage of the repeaters or not. I'll see if I can give it a try later today. I'll take the master bedroom remote downstairs and see if the commands from it make it back up to the shades. The trouble is I don't have any way of knowing whether the command would be going through the repeaters or directly to the shades by way of RF 'luck'. I don't think the LED on the repeaters ever lights up when a remote is being used.


No documentation is annoying! I appreciate any help or experimenting. I am trying to learn as much as possible before the installers return to continue debugging these issues. Over the phone they implied that HD told them to install the Hub/Bridge to see if it fixes the problems on the assumption the Hub/Bridge has a stronger signal. But I am suspicious about that response based on this discussion, and it won't fix the remote. I believe the shades only respond to RF. The remotes and the Hub must speak the same RF so they can both control the shades. I would also agree that the remote and the Hub are independent of each other, basically providing the same functions; controlling the shades. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how the repeaters work. I was thinking they just repeated the RF signal received, but you said LED lights don't light on the repeater when using the remote, and they do with the HUB, so something different is going on there. I'd love to talk to one of the HD engineers on this.....


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## desmolift

desmolift said:


> No documentation is annoying! I appreciate any help or experimenting. I am trying to learn as much as possible before the installers return to continue debugging these issues. Over the phone they implied that HD told them to install the Hub/Bridge to see if it fixes the problems on the assumption the Hub/Bridge has a stronger signal. But I am suspicious about that response based on this discussion, and it won't fix the remote. I believe the shades only respond to RF. The remotes and the Hub must speak the same RF so they can both control the shades. I would also agree that the remote and the Hub are independent of each other, basically providing the same functions; controlling the shades. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how the repeaters work. I was thinking they just repeated the RF signal received, but you said LED lights don't light on the repeater when using the remote, and they do with the HUB, so something different is going on there. I'd love to talk to one of the HD engineers on this.....


After going a little deeper on this, I found and read the operator manuals for the remote, scene controller, repeater, hub and app. The shades themselves appear much more intelligent than I had thought. They respond to commands for discovery, position, etc. The best way to think of this is, the remote, hub, repeater and shades are on a wireless network all potentially communicating with each other. The repeater must act just like a wifi repeater, simply extending the network. So, if the shade drops a packet of information for some reason like it missed it's address match or had data errors, it wouldn't matter if it originated from the remote or the hub. Causing the same failure symptoms. This would possibly also explain why the shades go unresponsive requiring a power reset, because of bugs in the shade. When I see this unresponsive failure, the manual button stops working, ie. the shade crashed. I suppose this could also be a hardware failure. There must be a small micro and firmware in the shade. If so, can it be updated.......

Update: For those interested in more detail. I spoke to level 3 support at HD this morning. I have confirmed with HD that others have seen the unreliability of the RF signal. Their explanation is RF interference. Not that satisfying. As for the unresponsive shade issue, they claim they are unaware of this problem. (but are now as of 5/2/16!) HD said that until the shades work reliably with the remote, they are not likely to work reliably with the Hub. The recommendation for the RF reliability issue is to add repeaters. Although, HD says the repeater does not have a stronger signal than the remote, but that the repeater is repeating the signal. So if the shade misses the signal from the remote, it can get it from the repeater. All sounds like a kludgy workaround, what if the repeater misses the signal, or the shade misses the signal twice. The remote, Hub, shade, repeater etc. are all on the same RF network, so the remote does work with the repeater, you do not need the hub. I was told the firmware within the shade was last updated in January of 2016. This firmware can not be updated in the field, its a motor swap to get the newer firmware. HD is looking into the non-responsive issue with the Engineers and will update me at a later date. I plan to get the installers back, and attempt adding just the repeaters to see if things improve.

As a side note, my 2 cents. The RF network is by definition using an unreliable media, that is, RF. For communication to/from the shade to be reliable, you must run a reliable protocol over the unreliable media. If this is not the case, the shades will always have the potential to miss commands and instructions.

Update: I have verified with HD, they do not use a reliable protocol between the shade and the Remote. The shade is programmed to respond to a Remote ID & Group ID, the remote broadcasts the command, the shade(s) receives it and executes the command. There is no acknowledgement. So the only way to make this reliable, is to have the shade reliably receive the command the first time every time. HD has been very pro-active on debugging these issue, attempting to reproduce the issues in their labs. I'll report the results back as they unfold.


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## wsf0817

I was just looking in to these today and am glad I found this thread. 

For those of you having issues, although you have said the distance between shades doesn't matter, are the ones you are working with all in the same room? Just wondering if I might get off easier as I'm only planning on doing the power modules in the master BR.

Interesting to hear that HD (via your local vendor I'm assuming) is still helping with the debug. Lots of times its set it up and "you're on your own sucker!"


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## Tonomeis2

I started with 6 and now have 8 PowerView Solar Shades, all in one room, the furthest is approx 22 feet from the hub. Hunter Douglas saw my posts here and on their FaceBook page, and a customer service rep contacted me through FaceBook within a day of my post. 

I have to compliment Hunter Douglas, as they have been in contact with the vendor who did the installation and me often since my posts, in an attempt to troubleshoot and resolve the issues. On Monday of this week the vendor was here to replace 2 shades and install 2 additional shades. He was able to speak with HD techs and customer service during the install and take video and pics for them to help troubleshoot the issues. They are going to replace one more shade and the pebble remote. The vendor asked me to use both the remote and the hub/PowerView app as much as possible to see if the issues continue. The installer called me about 3 hours after he left to check how they were operating and told me to call if I had any issues. I will post again once they've replaced the items and provide an update on if they were able to resolve my issues. But I will say that I am impressed with how Hunter Douglas has responded to this situation.


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## wkearney99

I have a whole house situation. 7+ areas with the shades, over three floors, built using modern construction (as in, no lead paint or other older RF-blocking materials). I have either the hub or a repeater within 20' of any of them. I've tried all manner of rearranging the hub and repeaters before finding my current layout. Which works, most of the time, except for three shades. All of which are within the same range as others right there in the same room with them. 

I dearly wish there was a way to see a debug log of shade RF signals. I'd imagine that would go a LONG way toward isolating RF problems. As yet, nothing from HD. No diag tools at all.

I know RF interference can be problematic. But without any kind of strength-measuring tools there's no reliable way to troubleshoot this.

None of my Pebble remotes has had any trouble communicating with the shades assigned to them. From what I can tell the remotes are assigned to the shades separately from the hub/network. The hub software shows nothing regarding the remotes, leading me to believe they're not integrated with each other at all. Which is kind of unfortunate as it would be handy to be able to use the pebble buttons to perhaps trigger other activities (like coordinated lighting or home automation). No options for that at all.

As I've said, I needed top-down shades and HD is the only supplier for that style. If all you need are regular bottom-up shades, consider going with Lutron instead.


----------



## desmolift

wsf0817 said:


> I was just looking in to these today and am glad I found this thread.
> 
> For those of you having issues, although you have said the distance between shades doesn't matter, are the ones you are working with all in the same room? Just wondering if I might get off easier as I'm only planning on doing the power modules in the master BR.
> 
> Interesting to hear that HD (via your local vendor I'm assuming) is still helping with the debug. Lots of times its set it up and "you're on your own sucker!"


In my experience, the number of shades, the number of rooms, the distance, doesn't matter for the "missing RF signal issue". Because of the way these shades are designed, they will miss the RF signal from time to time. Of course, the more shades you have, the more likely you are to see the problem. Its statistical. So, you add shades, you increase the chance of seeing it. you add repeaters or click the remote five times for every one time and you reduce the chance. In my opinion, the issue is most annoying and completely unsat when you use the grouping feature or All button. Suppose you group four shades into one group, something I do because my windows are design this way. Lets say you want to close the group of four shades and stop it at 3/4 of the way. You push Group 2/Close, then Stop, at your desired position. If the signal is lost by any one of the four shades on the Close or Stop, you CANNOT align the shades and must attempt it with the manual button or recycling the shades and start all over. To get around this, you could program every shade within their own unique group, you would still have the issue with the All function, but you could then adjust the shade individually. This solution doesn't work for me because I have used all 6 groups and would have to add more remotes per room.

If your design is simple, one shade per window with no grouping and you use at least one repeater, I suspect you would be happy with the shades. If you plan on using grouping, I would proceed carefully, take the shades through a week of use before completing your transaction with the HD installer to be sure you are satisfied, something you should probably do anyway given some of the other issues seen.

Hope this is helpful.


----------



## humbug2

desmolift said:


> In my experience, ... they will miss the RF signal from time to time. ... Suppose you group four shades into one group, something I do because my windows are design this way. Lets say you want to close the group of four shades and stop it at 3/4 of the way. You push Group 2/Close, then Stop, at your desired position. If the signal is lost by any one of the four shades on the Close or Stop, you CANNOT align the shades and must attempt it with the manual button...


I have 3 of the original PowerRise Duettes and this has been an annoyance from the start. All usually = 2 & 3 followed by a select 1 and try again. 

Not to mention many problems because of the hair thin wiring and connectors when using their transformer. A strictly steerage class product. Only semi-redeeming feature is bottom-up which is my strong preference.


----------



## desmolift

An update from my previous posts.

First let me correct something I stated early, "firmware cannot be updated in the field". This is not true I was given some misinformation on this, the motors can easily be swapped out for motors with upgraded firmware or the motor itself can be re-flashed in the field by the HD technician.

A technical detail update, I was told by the HD technician, to conserve battery pack power, the shade will turn on and listen 3 times per second. I am not exactly sure how much is turned off, most likely a hibernate mode (mostly off but not completely) with the RF receiver off. Of course, this periodic listening is not synchronized between shades. So, its possible, the RF misses are due to the shade not listening at the time the RF signal is present. This would be random and unpredictable, distance would not matter or the number of shades, or the power of the RF signal, or RF interference, all would not be responsible for the issue. This issue would be reduced by adding repeaters or multiple button presses, a proven solution. If I was HD, I would increase this frequency and see if it resolves the issue. I suppose, an HD engineer might argue, 3 times per second is adequate to be sure of 99.9 % reliability, but I'd like to see that math. Its also possible that the embedded timers within the motor are not accurate depending on the internal priority implementation. Its my opinion that this matches the symptoms and the solutions presented by HD the best as opposed to RF interference folk lore.

An HD technician came to my house to address my issues. He replaced 3 motors and installed 3 repeaters, one repeater in a bedroom, two repeaters in a family room. The addition of the repeaters significantly reduced the RF misses, but not completely. The replacement of one of the motors corrected what was a very unreliable shade, it possibly had a bad antenna. The other two motors were replaced to address a shade lock up problem. The motors are being send back to HD for analysis. I am happy with HD support and attention being paid to my issues. They, unfortunately, fall back quickly to RF interference as an explanation for their issues. At one point I was told that I had too high an expectation and that RF is not reliable and never will be, comparing the shades to my garage door opener or my tv remote. If this is true, they should post it to their website and inform all their installers. I refuse to except this as these shades are very expensive around $1000 per shade. For this price, they should work reliably every time I press the button. I truly believe HD needs to continue to work these issues with Engineering. This is a good product, they just need to get the reliability up.


----------



## wkearney99

I find it's best to use the app to handle aligning sets of shades. Then use the remote to tie them together with the Favorite (heart) button. Fiddling with the remotes never seems to get exactly what I want. The favorite button is great! 

At some point I'm going to totally re-program everything and start over again. Right now it seems I have two shades that just do not want to work reliably, and they're going to be re-made. 

Once they're in, and the strings have had a chance to get settled then I'll re-do everything. The strings do seem to take some time to get 'settled' on their spools inside the hardware. There's a bit of readjusting necessary as that happens. It seems to take about two months of regularly scheduled open/close cycles. You can tell this by noticing there's some slack in the strings when the shades are fully open. These being top-down shades. With bottom-up it may not be as much of an issue, or as apparent. I wouldn't consider this a defect, just a reality of how string on spools is going to 'play out'. _Pun intended!_

I do wish there was an in-between option for storing the remotes. The Pebble holder is really nice. The wall mount is kind of ugly. I wish they'd have made something like the magnetic mount used in the Amazon voice remotes. That's an incredibly nice option. The handheld remote feels nice to use, and the magnets in the cradle allow for keeping it securely mounted, while still looking stylish. My only other option would be to do something unappealing like stick some velcro on the back of the Pebble, ugh. Hmm, wonder if anyone's tried making a 3D-printed cradle for the Pebble...


----------



## desmolift

wkearney99 said:


> ...The strings do seem to take some time to get 'settled' on their spools inside the hardware. There's a bit of readjusting necessary as that happens. It seems to take about two months of regularly scheduled open/close cycles. You can tell this by noticing there's some slack in the strings when the shades are fully open. ..


Interesting that you brought this up. I have the Designer roller shades, but they also went out of adjustment over time. As part of the service the other day, all the shades needed to be re-adjusted because they were puddling on the sills. The HD installer and technician said they had not seen this before. I'm not sure if this is a break-in thing, or some other issue, it wasn't clear. And yes, adjusting this with the remote, is a bit difficult requiring multiple attempts to get it right.


----------



## wkearney99

desmolift said:


> Interesting that you brought this up. I have the Designer roller shades, but they also went out of adjustment over time. As part of the service the other day, all the shades needed to be re-adjusted because they were puddling on the sills. The HD installer and technician said they had not seen this before. I'm not sure if this is a break-in thing, or some other issue, it wasn't clear. And yes, adjusting this with the remote, is a bit difficult requiring multiple attempts to get it right.


Flicking the grab-handle for the shade in the app is a LOT less tedious than trying to bump it with the remote. That and you can then snapshot the current positions into the scene. VERY handy for setting them up. Likewise for setting a Favorite button on the remote. Trouble is, iirc, you have to press the button on the shade to lock-in the remote settings. That's a bit tricky for several of mine as I've got 10' ceilings and there's furniture in the way. I'd love to be able to coordinate the hub and the remote programming without needing that button press...

As for '_not seen before_' I'm always skeptical when I hear that from a vendor/installer. I always think they've just not done enough installs (_what fun, being the test guinea pig_) or they're lying trying to hide what's shaping up to be a product defect. Hard to tell which... yet. 

I do love having automated shades, but as with any home automation that uses wireless if you want "perfection" be prepared for periods of disappointment.


----------



## desmolift

wkearney99 said:


> ...I do love having automated shades, but as with any home automation that uses wireless if you want "perfection" be prepared for periods of disappointment.


Thing is, given a proper implementation, I know this wireless connection can be made reliable and improvement made on software diagnostics, avoiding all these disappointments. They should also be more forthcoming with information, so there are not surprises. Pre-sales needs improvement. They could implement diagnostics with the hub, they could keep statistics within the motors, they could have a retrievable log in the shade, they could allow shade firmware upgrades via the hub, they could allow firmware revision queries to the shades, etc. etc... They just have to WANT to address their issues and the product would be greatly improved.


----------



## Deane Johnson

desmolift said:


> . I have the Designer roller shades, but they also went out of adjustment over time. As part of the service the other day, all the shades needed to be re-adjusted because they were puddling on the sills. The HD installer and technician said they had not seen this before.


I've seen this happen on the HD roller/solar shades.

On the issue of a shade missing the RF command, I'm suspicious in my own usage of being guilty of tapping the button too quickly and not sending a long enough RF signal for the shade that might have missed it on the first listen to catch it on the 2nd or 3rd listen. Those subsequent listen takes up to a second to happen. This is purely conjecture on my part, but if so, might explain why a shade occasionally misses a command. Of course, it's possible the RF burst from the Pebble is timed to last the required amount of time. I don't know.


----------



## desmolift

Deane Johnson said:


> I've seen this happen on the HD roller/solar shades.
> 
> On the issue of a shade missing the RF command, I'm suspicious in my own usage of being guilty of tapping the button too quickly and not sending a long enough RF signal for the shade that might have missed it on the first listen to catch it on the 2nd or 3rd listen. Those subsequent listen takes up to a second to happen. This is purely conjecture on my part, but if so, might explain why a shade occasionally misses a command. Of course, it's possible the RF burst from the Pebble is timed to last the required amount of time. I don't know.


My guess would be the RF signal from the remote is not related to the period of time you press the button. I believe the RF signal is sent once with every click. As for the delay post a failed click for over a second, I have seen this also. It's possible, the firmware in the shade has a recovery process it goes threw when it catches a partial/failed RF signal, causing the listening period to decrease. Kind of a settling time... but this also is speculation on my part.

Its actually amazing how we adapt and create our own solutions to a failing shade. When the installer was here, he stressed repeatedly to me, not to click the remote button "too quickly", also he said to allow the shades to complete their "full cycle", in response to shades not responding correctly. On the other hand, the HD technician came here, he grabbed the remote to test the shades for RF misses, and what does he do? Every time he clicks the remote, he clicks it 5 times as fast as he can. I asked him, what are you doing there? He said, "I find they work best if you click the remote 5 times fast." Then he proceeded to blame the issues on the science of RF interference.


----------



## wkearney99

desmolift said:


> My guess...
> 
> 
> When the installer was here, he stressed repeatedly to me, not to click the remote button "too quickly"
> He said, "I find they work best if you click the remote 5 times fast."




See, this kind of cargo cult nonsense is what we get when the vendors don't provide useful documentation and troubleshooting tools. SMH, it's infuriating hearing the ridiculous nonsense the field techs spout in front of customers...


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## desmolift

wkearney99 said:


> [/LIST]
> See, this kind of cargo cult nonsense is what we get when the vendors don't provide useful documentation and troubleshooting tools. SMH, it's infuriating hearing the ridiculous nonsense the field techs spout in front of customers...


+1, Couldn't agree more. The techs are as much at a loss, as we are. There is no way to debug this system, only part swaps.


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## ryan2112

I'm an HD dealer and I'm coming here to seek answers. I have 3 clients with power view. All 3 have the exact same issue as you describe. Some shades work great. Others are hit or miss. HD support has run us through resetting the shade and even swapping the hub. It's all BS! They know they have RF issues and anything shy of app/firmware updates ain't gonna fix it. I've got a guy who spent $20k on shades and he's not understanding about this. Why should I continue to sell power view moving forward? I won't be until this is resolved.


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## wildta

ryan2112 said:


> I'm an HD dealer and I'm coming here to seek answers. I have 3 clients with power view. All 3 have the exact same issue as you describe. Some shades work great. Others are hit or miss. HD support has run us through resetting the shade and even swapping the hub. It's all BS! They know they have RF issues and anything shy of app/firmware updates ain't gonna fix it. I've got a guy who spent $20k on shades and he's not understanding about this. Why should I continue to sell power view moving forward? I won't be until this is resolved.


Thanks for joining the discussion. I called HD yesterday to complain about lack of support/solutions and no answers/updates to this very expensive product. According to HD customer service, my dealer is working with HD engineers. I've also began to post publicly on the HD Facebook page to let future customers know about these issues before committing to the product. 

My dealer has been fantastic in terms of service but it's really out of his hands.


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## notek

ryan2112 said:


> Why should I continue to sell power view moving forward? I won't be until this is resolved.


I hear there are drop-in Somfy motors available for HD shades - anyone tried those? Would they be better than PowerView?


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## Deane Johnson

This might be of some use to someone.

https://ifttt.com/powerview?utm_source=thisweek&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=powerviewtext


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## Tonomeis2

Had some time and looked into the IFTTT app last night. Set up some recipes to work with Amazon Echo and PowerView and the voice activation of scenes surprisingly work  there is about a 10 to 15 second delay between the command and the action, but it works. Not sure if it will help with the RF and other issues but it ease of add to the ease of use if those other issues can be minimized.

The IFTTT app does a lot more so its worth at least looking at.


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## Tonomeis2

Tonomeis2 said:


> Had some time and looked into the IFTTT app last night. Set up some recipes to work with Amazon Echo and PowerView and the voice activation of scenes surprisingly work  there is about a 10 to 15 second delay between the command and the action, but it works. Not sure if it will help with the RF and other issues but it ease of add to the ease of use if those other issues can be minimized.
> 
> The IFTTT app does a lot more so its worth at least looking at.


Sorry for the typos. That should have said "Not sure if it will help with the RF and other issues but if those other issues can be minimized, it helps with the ease of use of the shades."


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## wkearney99

One of my problematic shades may be having an electrical connection issue. It's on the west side of the house; second floor. It gets full daylight. When it's failed to operate I've taken to attempting to adjust the power cord to see if that made any difference. A few times now and I'm leaning toward the possibility that the shade is losing power "for some reason". It may be related to the temperature changes due to sunlight. I'm leaning toward either the cord itself or the joint it makes inside the shade assembly as the possible culprit. I say this because I've got 4 decades experience dealing with finicky electrical stuff and I know how to debug things. I've taken to using some small bits of foam pressed tightly against the connector into the battery pack and the window. This to effectively guarantee there's a physical connection being maintained. That did not improve the situation. So it's not the battery pack or the connection into it. I've kept those tight, and in place, and then repositioned the cord leading into the shade. I moved the cord and pressed a button on the remote. About half the time that leads to the shade suddenly returning to operation.

The other problematic shade is on the east side; ground floor, and also gets direct sunlight. It's mounted at a much greater height and there's furniture in front of it. So it's not as convenient to test in this fashion.

Now, if *I had better tools*, like something that could ping the shade _via RF_, then I'd have more confidence regarding this line of troubleshooting. But since this is VERY hard to replicate, but *DOES *re-occur, I can't be certain.

It seems the only recourse here is to have the shade 'remade', which is essentially them sending out a new one and swapping it. Seems like a ridiculous waste of time & money, not to mention inconvenience (for both the customer AND the installer).


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## Deane Johnson

wkearney99, what brand of batteries are you using? Hunter has done extensive testing and they claim Energizers are the most trouble free and long lasting.

A couple of things of note. I ran into one shade that the owner had just put new batteries in, I don't remember the brand, and the shade was erratic in it's performance. Sometimes worked, sometimes didn't.  I took his out and put in Energizers and it's worked ever since. Questionable, but that's what happened.

The other day I noticed that some new Duracell batteries had the positive terminal submerged a bit into the case (by design). I'm wondering if these could possibly cause connection problems.

Something else I learned the hard way. When changing batteries, don't drop them into the case. When they hit together towards the bottom, the jolt can break the case seal and you get instant corrosion starting. I did it.


----------



## MatteraDesignInc

wkearney99 said:


> I've got 15 of the new PowerView shades, in four rooms. It's a newly built house (no old materials or RF-blocking lead paint). It's 3 stories, including basement, with a mostly open floorplan.
> 
> The mesh RF setup is uneven, at best. But then I'm only a few days into owning them. I expected a bit of rearranging was going to be necessary. The hub (their RF-to-ethernet bridge) had to be moved up to the Master Bedroom (along with a Tivo, wired Chromecast, Amazon FireTV and other gear). I've got their repeaters in the other rooms. The repeaters are positioned such that they're in-between the shades for that room and the hub. As in, upstairs shades -> hub -> repeater -> 1st floor shades.
> 
> The initial experience is, to be kind, uneven. If I use the PowerView remote (the pebble) to manually join the shades to it that seemed to work. But in the master bedroom one of them has decided not to answer to the remote. Likewise, two of the five in the living room don't seem to want to respond consistently.
> 
> The app on iOS is not great. For one, it has NO SECURITY AT ALL. Nor does it have a non-editing mode. Right, so anyone with access to my WiFi network has the ability to do ANYTHING to the setup of the hub! Who the Hell thought this was a good idea? Ok, so that's BAD. But to make things worse, there's no read-only mode. So I can't put the app on anything accessible to anyone else in the house. At least not without risking someone accidentally making unintended changes to the configuration.
> 
> There's also no technical information accessible for troubleshooting. No way to tell the strength a given device has to the RF network. So placement of the hubs and repeaters is pretty much blind hit-and-miss guesswork.


If the shades, etc are lowering and raising at different rates it could also be the Motor(s).
Are some of the shade larger than others? Ask your rep if the Motor is strong enough.


----------



## wkearney99

MatteraDesignInc said:


> If the shades, etc are lowering and raising at different rates it could also be the Motor(s).
> Are some of the shade larger than others? Ask your rep if the Motor is strong enough.


No, _when _they move they're at the _same _rate. These are 26" wide windows, so there shouldn't be any issues with strength. That and these are factory HD shades, not something built by the installer using different materials and motors. Now, whether HD is using effectively engineered solutions is certainly an open question...

Last night I ran up against the same dead shade, and wiggling the power cord, once again, revived it. That is, pressing the remote button did nothing, nor did using the app. Moving the cord and retrying worked. So hopefully my installer will be getting remade replacements sometime soon...


----------



## wkearney99

Deane Johnson said:


> wkearney99, what brand of batteries are you using? Hunter has done extensive testing and they claim Energizers are the most trouble free and long lasting.
> 
> A couple of things of note. I ran into one shade that the owner had just put new batteries in, I don't remember the brand, and the shade was erratic in it's performance. Sometimes worked, sometimes didn't. I took his out and put in Energizers and it's worked ever since. Questionable, but that's what happened.
> 
> The other day I noticed that some new Duracell batteries had the positive terminal submerged a bit into the case (by design). I'm wondering if these could possibly cause connection problems.
> 
> Something else I learned the hard way. When changing batteries, don't drop them into the case. When they hit together towards the bottom, the jolt can break the case seal and you get instant corrosion starting. I did it.


Lutron has likewise done a lot of battery testing for their shades. I have a load tester and have always made sure they've all got the same amount of charge. You absolutely want to avoid mismatched batteries, as the low ones will degrade the level of the rest. That was the first thing I checked when this problem started. All of the batteries had about the same 75% charge level, which seemed good given they'd been in use for about a year. I got a whole new set, checked each one and installed those. The problem did not go away.

That and I've already swapped one pack for another and the problem does not follow the battery pack. It stays with the shade assembly. 

The quality of plastics of the battery cases is questionable. It's awfully thin where the end caps connect. Thin enough that I'm wary of any mishandling that might lead to breakage. Thus far mine are OK, but I'm sure they're going to have a lot of replacement problems over time...


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## Deane Johnson

I recently had another bizarre thing happen with batteries in a HD Silhouette.

Customer called with a completely dead Silhouette, one of three. We had just put batteries in it about a month earlier. We put a spare freshly loaded battery wand on the shade and it worked normally.

Being curious about dead batteries after one month, I took them out and checked them with my load applying battery tester. First battery slammed the meter in the wrong direction. Turned the battery around to the wrong polarity and it showed some charge, but still down in the red. Further checking showed 5 of the 12 batteries had reversed polarity, all 12 were depleted down into the red.

Looking around the internet for a clue on why and how batteries would change polarity, the only thing I could come up with is that if one of the batteries becomes completely depleted, probably due to being defective, and the others remain fully charged, that puts a reverse polarity on a dead battery and the others begin to recharge it in reverse which continues until they get low. I'm not sure how it ended up reversing 5 of them, but that's the closest I can come to figuring out what happened.


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## wkearney99

Deane Johnson said:


> I recently had another bizarre thing happen with batteries in a HD Silhouette.


That IS bizarre. I think the unusual element here is these trays use a lot of batteries in series. Not many things ever have to do this. I mean, I get why, pushing all that fabric around takes some energy. This makes me think the very thin gauge wire HD is using for these shades might be part of the problem on my intermittent units. The wire's so thin that it's entirely possible it got damaged or otherwise manhandled during the installation process. Not that I'm looking to blame the installers, rather questioning if there's going to be this many batteries whether wire this thin is such a great idea?


----------



## SkippyJustice

wsf0817 said:


> I was just looking in to these today and am glad I found this thread.
> 
> For those of you having issues, although you have said the distance between shades doesn't matter, are the ones you are working with all in the same room? Just wondering if I might get off easier as I'm only planning on doing the power modules in the master BR.
> 
> Interesting to hear that HD (via your local vendor I'm assuming) is still helping with the debug. Lots of times its set it up and "you're on your own sucker!"


My wife and I just invested quite a bit of money in these shades with the PowerView option. They were installed yesterday.

Installed yesterday. 
12 Windows some of which are very large. 
Our home is a brand new construction. 
We have a fiber optic network and a Netgear, Nighthawk X4S R7800 although the Wifi Router shouldn't make a huge difference. 
Some of the windows are grouped together and some windows are not.​
Our seller stated that the reviews online weren't very accurate if the end user knew what they were doing. I am an engineer. So far the experience is very hit or miss. We have repeaters which don't seem to make much of a difference. Some shades seem to miss more often than others even with a repeater placed in several locations nearby. In fact, the one shade that misses the most is one of the closest to the originating signal. We placed the repeater right under it as well as between it and the hub. That shade misses with the remote sometimes as well even if you are close to it and try a variety of different "button press times." We also had one shade that went completely off the reservation and needed to be reset before it could be found again. We are beginning to wonder what our return options are. We will give it a bit more time but quite frankly, if you buy something, it should work regardless of how much you paid. Most states have consumer protection acts that address issues if you're really steamed about it. If HD is offering a product that isn't functioning as described, they really have no choice but to accept a return. Additionally, if we do return them, there will have to be some variety of discussion about the damage to the windows upon installation. As I mentioned, the home is brand new and the windows are all wrapped. Lots of new holes if those shades are removed... 

One interesting note, I was told by the seller that the installation technician would not setup the hub. It doesn't require much to set it up but I'm wondering how much that has to do with the hub not working 100% right. If you think about it, you could end up having an installer stuck in your house all day if you setup the hub and then started testing it. If the scenes and schedule are failing about 25% of the time (a guess, haven't measured yet) then the installation tech would be stuck there.

One thing I noticed that may or may not have been addressed already. The App I have to control the system lets you lock the hub so other users cannot mess with your schedules and scenes. At least that is a positive. It's not a great setup but it's a step in the right direction which makes me hope HD is improving the system.

We will give it a few more days / couple weeks and some more time with HD. If we are unsuccessful, we will begin what I am sure will be a painful and time consuming return process.


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## SkippyJustice

One last thing I wanted to mention. It would be a good idea to start collecting data on how much time you spend with HD support troubleshooting the PowerView System. Keep a log from the very first call/visit with start and stop times. If you wanted to pursue the Consumer Protection Act in your state, one of the normal requirements is that you have given the vendor a reasonable amount of opportunity to fix the solution. You could also make a spreadsheet of the windows/shades and check off how many times a scene or schedule works vs. doesn't work. The data helps. I don't know how helpful HD is or isn't yet so these are just suggestions. I'm hoping they are very helpful. However, I have seen too many instances where the consumer gets railroaded by the seller. This is bullying behavior and collecting data and reading up on the CPA in your state is a good way to protect yourself. Good advice for any large purchase.


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## vc123

wkearney99 said:


> Now, if *I had better tools*, like something that could ping the shade _via RF_, then I'd have more confidence regarding this line of troubleshooting.


There is some indication when reading the HD FCC certification report ( https://fccid.io/pdf.php?id=2644694) that the HD Hub/repeater use a Bluetooth LE chip. If that is correct, then one might use one of widely available (as opposed to say Zwave) Bluetooth LE development kit sniffers (either TI's CC2540 or Nordic's come to one's mind) to capture BLE packets and measure RSSI at critical point at your house. At $30 this can be had:

https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-the-adafruit-bluefruit-le-sniffer/introduction

What strikes one as bizarre is the fact that the equipment emits pretty low power as compared to the usual BLE levels, only -5 dbm.


----------



## SkippyJustice

Update: Some of the shades missed their commands yesterday. I had an idea. We bought the shades and hub primarily to run on a schedule. We also wondered why the hub doesn't issue scheduled commands in the following format

1) Ping Shades 
2) Refresh if "x" pings are not confirmed (where "x" is the number of shades that should respond)
3) Re-Ping Shades (repeat 2 if necessary)
4) Execute Command
5) Wait 1 minute
6) Execute Command Again​
If the same command is given to a shade that has already executed the command, nothing happens. It doesn't open again or get extra open for example. Also, when a shade goes AWOL, one of the first things you can do to troubleshoot is refresh the shade. So why not run this every time? 

Here is where my idea came in. We took the schedule and then copied every scheduled event adding 1 minute to the schedule time. So basically everything runs twice. So far it has been working. Theoretically, it should lower the number of times that a command is simply "missed." Also, it shouldn't affect battery life too much. The primary draw on the battery is the motorization of the blinds so any additional communication would be worth the small battery drain.


----------



## wildta

SkippyJustice said:


> We took the schedule and then copied every scheduled event adding 1 minute to the schedule time. So basically everything runs twice. So far it has been working.


Great short term solution! Thanks!


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## wkearney99

vc123 said:


> https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-the-adafruit-bluefruit-le-sniffer/introduction


Ooooo! Thanks for that link, I've ordered one. I've been meaning to do some BLE development and that looks like it'll help!


----------



## wkearney99

I'm not sure what the hell is going on, but I've got two shades that intermittently fail to respond to the remote, the hub or both... randomly. The one in the master bedroom (the important room, as that's the one where the wife INSISTS the blackout shades actually, y'know, CLOSE? That one, I don't know, yesterday it just would not listen to the Pebble remote. Nada, nothing, the other two in the room worked ok. On a lark I pulled up the app on an Android table and gave the shade a jog... and it moved. Sent it the close command and it did nothing. Sent it again and it closed. 

The hit-and-miss aspect here is infuriating. Not at ALL acceptable at this price point.


----------



## SkippyJustice

wkearney99 said:


> The hit-and-miss aspect here is infuriating. Not at ALL acceptable at this price point.


Agreed. So far my method of copying the schedule is also hit and miss. I tried copying it out by one minute. I have even tried triplicating it. It is still missing shades. It seems like the Hub misses more often than the remote. I am now going to try pushing it out every 5 minutes for 3 Cycles. I will report back


----------



## wkearney99

wkearney99 said:


> Ooooo! Thanks for that link, I've ordered one. I've been meaning to do some BLE development and that looks like it'll help!


Those Adafruit folks are _quick_, it just arrived here *yesterday*. I'm going to see about getting it set up on a laptop this weekend. I'm very interested to see if it'll hear any of the HD shade RF signals.


----------



## vc123

wkearney99;44496177 I'm very interested to see if it'll hear any of the HD shade RF signals.[/QUOTE said:


> Me, too. I do not own any HA BLE devices at this point, so I'd appreciate if you shared your experience. Assuming that HD indeed uses BLE.
> 
> We have a sunroom with 7 large windows and a sliding door that I am not sure what to do about. So, we are looking at various options, but have not come to a decision yet.


----------



## wkearney99

As I tell anyone interested in window treatments, consider working with a designer/decorator that understands your goals. 

Sliding doors are an adventure. There's something to be said for not automating them if they're going to be getting used a lot. Anything you put on an actively used sliding door is going to suffer from abuse; automated or not. People that don't understand how or aren't willing to use the mechanism properly are likely to cause breakage. It's one thing to have an inexpensive traverse rod setup get broken. It's another to have a pricey automated setup get wrecked. Me, I avoided sliding doors entirely when we built the new house. French doors instead and either no shades at all or frosted glass. That and they're placed such that there's no privacy issues to be overly concerned about. Not everyone has that option, of course. This is why I highly recommend spending some time (and perhaps money) working with someone that really understands window treatments and their impact on lifestyle.

As for large windows, do you mean height, width or both? Some treatment options are better than others when it comes to automating large sections. The bigger the spread, the more power necessary to move the material. Some situations can't be done effectively without going with hard-wired options for power. Control can still be wireless, but moving a lot of fabric just might not be practical (or even possible) with batteries. Here again is a reason to work with a local supplier.

Tried using the BLE gizmo but ran afoul of errors. Not sure what's going on. Drivers and whatnot are an adventure sometimes when Wireshark is involved...


----------



## vc123

wkearney99 said:


> As for large windows, do you mean height, width or both?
> ...
> Tried using the BLE gizmo but ran afoul of errors. Not sure what's going on. Drivers and whatnot are an adventure sometimes when Wireshark is involved...


The windows are about 70x42 (hxw) separated by about 9" columns. The arrangement: w - w -w - 90 degree corner- w - w -sliding door- w - w, or in other words, one 'panel' of three windows and two "panels of two windows with a sliding door in between. Saw a number of options, talked to several people loked nothing (aesthetically speaking).

Re. sniffer. Does Nordic's Windows utility show any traffic ? Or it does not see the USB hardware at this point ?


----------



## wkearney99

vc123 said:


> The windows are about 70x42 (hxw) separated by about 9" columns. The arrangement: w - w -w - 90 degree corner- w - w -sliding door- w - w, or in other words, one 'panel' of three windows and two "panels of two windows with a sliding door in between. Saw a number of options, talked to several people loked nothing (aesthetically speaking).
> 
> Re. sniffer. Does Nordic's Windows utility show any traffic ? Or it does not see the USB hardware at this point ?


The sniffer setup sort of worked but then Wireshark kept quitting, and then the sniffer wouldn't work. I didn't have time to be doing the reboot dance to figure it out. That and the laptop in question was running Windows 10, likely adding further complications. 

An aspect to consider for window treatments is layering. What gets used to make the windows 'look pretty' is sometimes different than what you use for privacy. As in, there are sheers, drapes or other fancy kinds of things that make it look nice during the day, but at night the roller shades come down and close off the view. Or there's two sets of rollers, one for daytime privacy and another for blackout. There are dual rollers in one assembly mechanisms out there. Likewise roman shades, with their layers of material can pull double-duty of decoration and privacy/light management. 

It really depends on what's going to fit your needs best and have a look that works. None of it will be cheap, so get over the hope of any kind of cost savings.


----------



## vc123

wkearney99 said:


> have a look that works. None of it will be cheap, so get over the hope of any kind of cost savings.


The "look" is what's most problematic, I have reconciled myself to the cost. We are in no hurry, especially because the room looks not bad without any shades  and the location is such that privacy concerns do not arise as much as they might have otherwise.


----------



## wkearney99

I deliberately did not get shades when we first moved into the house. Instead I just used some of the temporary stick-on fan-fold kind. A tip shared with me about those was NEVER put the adhesive part on any painted surface, just clear off enough backing to allow sticking it to the glass.

Yes, this wasn't pretty but it served to let us learn just how much light and privacy we did or didn't want across the various spaces. It likewise taught us which windows won't really EVER have their position changed, thus saving a fair bit of money not automating them. We went with the manual kind, that adjust via a grab handle on the shades themselves.


----------



## wkearney99

Ok, did they lose their database of logins or something? I could have sworn that I'd already set up an account for the app. Nope, no login found for my e-mail... Oookay..

Set it up, try to login.... app crashes. SMH....

Restart, needs to register my hub.... hangs, endlessly spins busy icon on screen.... nothing.... Restart... and it's already registered? 

Great...

All because I'm trying to use the app to set up a second schedule to overcome the failure the way the blinds fail to work in the first place!

Curiously IFTTT now seems to have an interface. Might use that as a belt-and-suspenders bit of coverage... I mean, hey, the blinds are already randomly operating, why not add IFTTT's inconsistencies to the mix as well!


----------



## zoro

did any one sync these with lutron or vivint and how


----------



## wkearney99

zoro said:


> did any one sync these with lutron or vivint and how


I addressed this in the Lutron thread: http://www.avsforum.com/forum/162-home-automation/1178211-lutrons-radiora2-57.html#post44610377

No, basically there's no way to tie PowerView and RA2 to each other, at least not without using a 3rd party automation system. 

Vivint doesn't have that. Meanwhile their CEO's hobby seems to result in killing children: https://ksl.com/?sid=40088902&nid=148


----------



## vc123

wkearney99 said:


> The sniffer setup sort of worked but then Wireshark kept quitting, and then the sniffer wouldn't work. I didn't have time to be doing the reboot dance to figure it out. That and the laptop in question was running Windows 10, likely adding further complications.


I have a small project where I need to measure temperature at several points in my house. 

So, I thought about using BLE beacons that provide temperature/humidity and got the other day the same sniffer as you did. Surprisingly, the easiest way to use it was on my my macbook pro. I just needed to install this piece (https://sourceforge.net/projects/nrfblesnifferosx/?source=typ_redirect ) referenced from the sniffer instructions and wireshark 1.12.12. Wireshark 1.12.12 requires Quartz (X11) which I already had. Wireshark 2.0.4 that does not require X11 may not work. I have not experienced any crashes and did not need to play with USB FTDI drivers -- the sniffer was immediately visible. On my Windows notebook I did experience some crashes.

Since I do not own any beacons (one is still on its way), I tested the setup with my ipad that can emulate an ibeacon by running an app. I just downloaded a random app from the appstore. 

Here's a tshark verbose output for one frame (wireshark shows the same info in UI):

Frame 873: 62 bytes on wire (496 bits), 62 bytes captured (496 bits) on interface 0
Interface id: 0 (\\.\pipe\wireshark_nordic_ble)
Encapsulation type: USER 10 (55)
Arrival Time: Dec 31, 1969 19:00:44.285555000 EST
[Time shift for this packet: 0.000000000 seconds]
Epoch Time: 44.285555000 seconds
[Time delta from previous captured frame: 0.014118000 seconds]
[Time delta from previous displayed frame: 0.014118000 seconds]
[Time since reference or first frame: 14.535489000 seconds]
Frame Number: 873
Frame Length: 62 bytes (496 bits)
Capture Length: 62 bytes (496 bits)
[Frame is marked: False]
[Frame is ignored: False]
[Protocols in frame: nordic_ble:btle:btcommon]
Nordic BLE Sniffer Meta
Nordic BLE V2: 1c0637011913060a
Board number: 0x1c (28)
Header length: 0x06 (6)
Payload length: 0x37 (55)
Protocol Version: 1
UART Packet Count: 4889
Packet Type: Event Packet (0x06)
Event Header Length: 0x0a (10)
Flags: 0x01
.... .0.. = Encrypted: No (0)
.... ..0. = Direction: Slave -> Master (0)
.... ...1 = CRC: OK (1)
Channel: 38
RSSI: -62 dBm
Delta Time: 352
Bluetooth Low Energy Link Layer
Access Address: 0x8e89bed6
Packet Header: 0x2440 (PDU Type: ADV_IND, TxAdd=false, RxAdd=false)
..00 .... = RFU: 0
.1.. .... = Randomized Tx Address: True
...0 .... = Reserved: False
.... 0000 = PDU Type: ADV_IND (0x00)
00.. .... = RFU: 0
..10 0100 = Length: 36
Advertising Address: 49:17:8c:39:7e:bb (49:17:8c:39:7e:bb)
Advertising Data
Flags
Length: 2
Type: Flags (0x01)
000. .... = Reserved: 0x00
...1 .... = Simultaneous LE and BR/EDR to Same Device Capable (Host): true (0x01)
.... 1... = Simultaneous LE and BR/EDR to Same Device Capable (Controller): true (0x01)
.... .0.. = BR/EDR Not Supported: false (0x00)
.... ..1. = LE General Discoverable Mode: true (0x01)
.... ...0 = LE Limited Discoverable Mode: false (0x00)
Manufacturer Specific
Length: 26
Type: Manufacturer Specific (0xff)
Company ID: Apple, Inc. (0x004c)
Data: 0215ebf6ce32e303491fbde92afe07fa8d9a00010001c8
[Expert Info (Unknown (83886080)/Protocol): Undecoded]
[Undecoded]
[Severity level: Unknown]
[Group: Protocol]
CRC: 0x61ca94
[Expert Info (Chat/Protocol): correct]
[correct]
[Severity level: Chat]
[Group: Protocol]

The interesting metric is 'RSSI: -62 dBm', of course. That was captured at about 1 meter from the sniffer. RSSI jumps about a bit between -60 and -65 depending on how I hold the iPad in my hands. At 20', RSSI is about -75dbm. Interestingly, the ibeacon packet claims that the signal strength at 1 meter should be -55 (the last byte in the payload).

I'll see how it goes with a real beacon, and then, perhaps, will graduate to an HD wireless assuming it's a BLE one


----------



## wkearney99

vc123 said:


> On my Windows notebook I did experience some crashes...
> 
> ...perhaps, will graduate to an HD wireless assuming it's a BLE one


I just don't have free time at the moment to fight the usual driver nonsense with Wireshark. I'm sure there's some magic incantation or animal sacrifice necessary, but not right now...

I have a couple of AprilBrother beacons and did see packets from them while I had it running. I pulled their batteries, so as to avoid anything 'known' sending BLE traffic. Likewise shutdown any iOS devices. I had the Pebble remote handy and sent some commands but didn't see anything in the Wireshark dumps. I did not have a chance to try using the app to send shade movement commands via the hub.

That's as far as I was able to get.


----------



## SkippyJustice

Still having problems. Spoke to the seller and we are going to add repeaters in every room. My house is a two story, 2500 sq ft home. It is almost square. The maximum distance from the hub (which is almost in the center of the house) is probably 25-35 ft. I am now adding repeaters to shades that are maybe 15 ft away from the hub. I have a 75 MB down, 75 MB up Fiber Optic connection with a Nighthawk router so it isn't the network. It is absurd that HD cannot make a solution that has a range that extends beyond a few feet. It is not like wireless technology is brand new either. Even more hilarious, I have to pay for each of the repeaters so that the $10-11K system I bought can work. Great job HD. Your crack team of 1970s engineers is doing a wonderful job. Maybe your next automated solution can release a flock of carrier pigeons that can pull on the shade cord while crapping all over my house. $10K. This system should work...


----------



## c-wolff

*Amazing*

After reading this thread I am very happy to have gone with Somfy brand motors. That and the fact the HD quote was $5K more than what we went with, also, Somfy working well with home automation systems. Good luck!


----------



## wkearney99

c-wolff said:


> After reading this thread I am very happy...


Well, good for you. Unfortunately they don't offer a top-down/bottom-up option in the style, width and kinds of material I wanted. There's a lot more to automating window treatments than the majority of vendors offer. Mine happened to fall into a group where HD is pretty much the only supplier I could find. My advice to others is be sure your window treatment plan can actually be automated effectively.


----------



## wkearney99

wildta said:


> Great short term solution! Thanks!


I can also offer that works for the one shade that bugs my wife. I setup a second scheduled event for the scene as a backup. The 1st one fires 10 minutes before sunset. This one fires 10 minutes after. There's not often anyone in that room during that time. But now it'll at least have a shot and making sure the damned shade is closed when she does get there. 

I may try fiddling around to see just how closely together I can program the events. The shade motion typically takes less than a minute to complete, so I could in theory just set them back-to-back. 

Since these are tied to an offset of sunset, the time is never the same day-to-day. And there's nothing else scheduled on anything else in the house at that same offset. But it's a suburban house and there are other houses potentially close enough for there to be other things that could potentially interfere. Nobody within 200' has HD shades, I checked. But there's plenty of other stuff on cordless phones, WiFi and Bluetooth bands.

Without tools to monitor, however, it's just guesswork.


----------



## wildta

c-wolff said:


> After reading this thread I am very happy to have gone with Somfy brand motors. That and the fact the HD quote was $5K more than what we went with, also, Somfy working well with home automation systems. Good luck!


How has Somfy's Mylink app been working for you? I'm just curious to hear your personal experience so far.


----------



## mrredskin

this all sounds like complete hell (coming from someone who's just getting into the home automation game)


----------



## Deane Johnson

It might be useful to know that the RF output of all of the PowerView remote devices is the same strength, which is at FCC maximum level. In other words, the RF output of the Hub, the Pebble Remote, the Repeaters are all the same strength.

I would not expect the Hub (or any other of the other devices) to work in one hop for any great distance, such as 25 to 30 feet through walls.

Also to keep in mind, too many repeaters in one area can create issues. The preferred number is one per room.


----------



## vc123

Deane Johnson said:


> It might be useful to know that the RF output of all of the PowerView remote devices is the same strength, which is at FCC maximum level. In other words, the RF output of the Hub, the Pebble Remote, the Repeaters are all the same strength.


We do not know whether the HD RF gadgets use maximum allowable power level, much less if they use the same level without measuring those levels. 

From their FCC filing, it appears that they do just the opposite for whatever misguided reason(e.g. conserving batteries at the expense of communication reliability) : https://fccid.io/UXUSC4U1

I agree wrt too many repeaters. They may, in fact, make the situation worse by cluttering the already cluttered 2.4GHz band even more.


----------



## Deane Johnson

vc123 said:


> We do not know whether the HD RF gadgets use maximum allowable power level, much less if they use the same level without measuring those levels.
> 
> From their FCC filing, it appears that they do just the opposite for whatever misguided reason(e.g. conserving batteries at the expense of communication reliability) : https://fccid.io/UXUSC4U1
> 
> I agree wrt too many repeaters. They may, in fact, make the situation worse by cluttering the already cluttered 2.4GHz band even more.




I'm only passing along what Hunter has told me regarding power output of the remote devices.

I do know that they do everything possible to conserve battery usage.


----------



## SkippyJustice

Just a follow up from my earlier posts. The shades seem to be automating well now and following the schedule I have created. That being said, we had to purchase a bunch of repeaters. Almost every room in my house has one of those little repeaters plugged into an outlet. It's kind of ridiculous. The repeaters cost me $75 each. It also doesn't make a ton of sense that the reach of the hub is so short. I think HD went cheap on the hub. 

It is nice to have the blinds on a schedule though. That being said, I cannot get my blinds to run off of the IFTTT.com app website. My log for IFTTT says it has run 17 times but I have never seen the shades respond accordingly. I cannot get the shades to run when I login remotely (when I am not in range of the hub, ex. I am at work). I have tried repeatedly (no pun intended on a mostly "repeater" post).

On the upside, it is cool to be standing outside your house, click a button on your phone and watch everything open or close.


----------



## wkearney99

Schedules are great. I have four main sets I use. Night, Daytime, Privacy and Open. I'm adding a weekday schedule for Privacy as I'd prefer some side windows were a little more closed while I'm working in the home office. 

I'm looking forward to experimenting with some "light harvesting" options in the future. I've got some office and breakfast table windows that would benefit from being adjusted based on their south-facing exposure and amount of daylight and outside temperature conditions. I can't do that with anything in the Hunter Douglas gear, of course, but other automation systems might offer some ways to pull it all together. The trick is getting PowerView shade integration into them. Which shouldn't be hard, except for Hunter Douglas having no decent developer documentation.


----------



## JP14

Kind of hijacking the thread, but curious about how people are doing scheduling / integration with keypads. This isn't HD specific - but thought I'd ask it here as a continuation of the thread.

Specifically, I have keypads in the kids's rooms with 4 buttons, and I'm hoping to provide integration between the lighting and shades; I can also control the lighting/shades via scheduling, to some degree.

My thought was to do the following:

Keypad
On - Lights On and Shades down
Night time - Lights lower and Shades down
Nite Lite - Lights low and Shades down
Off - Lights Off and Shades down

Scheduling
9am - open shades


What I'm struggling with is that the kids are still napping, so even in the middle of the day, the shades have to go down. But, what do we do after the kid wakes up from their afternoon nap, which could be 1 or 5pm, to open the shades again from the keypad? How do people normally do this - what scenes do you label/program into the keypads and how do you link that to the shades?

I think I might be able to do this with the limited control I have on time of day scenes, where we open the shades when the lights go on - I just don't want that to always happen, like when we're putting the kids to sleep.


----------



## wkearney99

It's probably worth it's own thread. 

What you'd use would depend on what you have. You'd need an automation tool of some sort that spoke to both your lighting and your shade systems. Which do what is definitely beyond the scope of this particular thread.

For a situation like kids napping and their wakeup time I'm not sure I'd use schedules. Any time they're asleep is precious (to the parents). You don't want gizmos screwing that up. So I'd lean more toward schedules for known evening sleep time. I say schedules because with the range of winter/summer daylight hours it might be best to set two. One for X minutes before/after sunset and then another for a fixed 'bedtime'. This way you're covered for a 4:30pm sunset in Winter, but always for the 8:00pm bedtime in the Summer. Wake time isn't as easy, you'd like just want to use a fixed time.

One point of concern, kids and automated shades don't always mix well. Little ones fiddling with the hardware can lead to problems. I deliberately went with non-automated shades for our child's room for this reason. Better to avoid a $200 add-on to a shade being something that gets broken...


----------



## JP14

Out of curiosity, what problems have you seen with kids and automated shades? I was making an assumption that since we've been okay with the kids and non-automated shades so far, there wouldn't be a problem. Since all of the hardware is up above the window, what damage can they do?


----------



## wkearney99

JP14 said:


> Out of curiosity, what problems have you seen with kids and automated shades? I was making an assumption that since we've been okay with the kids and non-automated shades so far, there wouldn't be a problem. Since all of the hardware is up above the window, what damage can they do?


Anytime you have buttons that can be pressed and motors that will move, you really want to think about what an attractive nuisance that can be with kids. If not just your kids, friends and guests. While the automation hardware may be up above, they're typically repaired as a whole unit. So fabric rips can turn into something expensive. 

Me, I try to err on the side of caution and not put things in front of little kids that are going to invite more expense and work for me. YMMV, of course.


----------



## HAdiy

I put down a deposit (50%) with a local HD retailer last Friday for 5 HD PowerView Roller Shades for my master bedroom (doing a combination of shutters and blinds elsewhere). This weekend I came across this post and I'm now a bit concerned with my decision. Should I look into another option due to the issues that have been brought of on this post related to reliability issues? Or have the issues been addressed?

In addition, I already have z-wave lights, fan controls, thermostats etc that are controlled with a 2gig system. Can the HD PowerView products be controlled via a Z-wave controller?


----------



## Deane Johnson

HAdiy said:


> In addition, I already have z-wave lights, fan controls, thermostats etc that are controlled with a 2gig system. Can the HD PowerView products be controlled via a Z-wave controller?


I don't think so on the Z-Wave, unless someone on here has come up with a way.

The HD Hub allows for control of scenes with serial commands, and of course extensive shade control with the regular HD free app using your phone or tablet.


----------



## roger_007

Hello people,

I have a question about the iOS app and hub. I got my iPhone, my iPad and my partner iPad connected to the hub, and everything works as it should.
But ... if I want to link the iPhone from my partner to the hub, I get the message "Hub not found". I really tried everything to restore the iPhone. Information about the iPhone:

- IPhone 6
- Firmware 9.3.2
- PowerView 1.4 app
- Same wifi router

Who knows this problem and who has a solution.

Roger


----------



## roger_007

roger_007 said:


> Hello people,
> 
> I have a question about the iOS app and hub. I got my iPhone, my iPad and my partner iPad connected to the hub, and everything works as it should.
> But ... if I want to link the iPhone from my partner to the hub, I get the message "Hub not found". I really tried everything (to restore the iPhone) also a recovery of the iPhone does not help. Information about the iPhone:
> 
> - IPhone 6
> - Firmware 9.3.2
> - PowerView 1.4 app
> - Same wifi router
> 
> Who knows this problem and who has a solution.
> 
> Roger


text modified


----------



## atbroome

desmolift said:


> Update: I have verified with HD, they do not use a reliable protocol between the shade and the Remote. The shade is programmed to respond to a Remote ID & Group ID, the remote broadcasts the command, the shade(s) receives it and executes the command. There is no acknowledgement. So the only way to make this reliable, is to have the shade reliably receive the command the first time every time


I came here looking for some info before ordering HD and I'm glad I did. For the price they charge, it is unbelievable HD went with a fire and forget protocol over an unreliable transport. There is no way I will buy HD PowerView with an implementation like this. I can see why they did this; its much easier/cheaper for the shades to be receive only but look what that choice got them with how the end product works.

yikes!


----------



## desmolift

atbroome said:


> I came here looking for some info before ordering HD and I'm glad I did. For the price they charge, it is unbelievable HD went with a fire and forget protocol over an unreliable transport. There is no way I will buy HD PowerView with an implementation like this. I can see why they did this; its much easier/cheaper for the shades to be receive only but look what that choice got them with how the end product works.
> 
> yikes!


Funny thing is, I believe they do have commands with responses back to the hub. But, they don't have a reliable protocol between the shade and the remote or hub. There are many enhancements that this system would benefit from. For one, there is no way to remotely re-flash the shades, not to mention a reliable communication. To be honest, the missing RF signal issue, I believe is due to the shade sleeping to save power. If your signal comes during a non listening period, it misses. I believe they are balancing cost and power consumption for battery life.


----------



## desmolift

*New firmware REV H*

Just FYI, there is a new firmware release for the roller shades and other models, REV H. Hunter Douglas was at my house today re-flashing 16 shades. The technician claimed the new revision fixes the "shade lockup problem", something I have seen occasionally. Identifying this problem is relatively easy. First the shade goes completely unresponsive from the pebble remote (most likely unresponsive from the hub as well, but I don't have one to verify) Next, attempt to manually lower the shade with the button on the motor, the shade will be unresponsive to this as well. Now, pull the DC power, insert the power, shade is back in working order. It will take some time to verify this is fixed, as it doesn't occur very frequently in my house, once a month. Reading through the posts again, I believe many of you may be seeing this problem. This release doesn't appear to address the "RF signal misses" or remotely re-flashing. The technician didn't know if it fixes the lower limit going out of adjustment. I have requested release notes on REV H from Hunter Douglas, but haven't received a response yet.


----------



## Jasonn B

atbroome said:


> I came here looking for some info before ordering HD and I'm glad I did. For the price they charge, it is unbelievable HD went with a fire and forget protocol over an unreliable transport. There is no way I will buy HD PowerView with an implementation like this. I can see why they did this; its much easier/cheaper for the shades to be receive only but look what that choice got them with how the end product works.
> 
> yikes!


I've been cotrolling my battery powered hunter shades for years now with X10 and a simple app, way before hunter even offered it. It's simple, costs barely anything and WORKS!


----------



## Ziba Ji

wkearney99 said:


> When I setup the Lutron app for my radio ra2 gear it does require setting up username and password on the main repeater. So while it is using the telnet protocol, in the clear over the wire, it does at least control access. That and the app does block homeowner edits if you choose that setting.
> 
> I don't have any shades associated with it but it would seem reasonable to assume that since they are joined to the same repeater and controlled by the same app there be the same username and password security associated with it.
> 
> As for Hunter Douglas repeaters, I'd suggest you clear it ahead of time with your installer or reseller that you may need to return some of the repeaters. That's how my installer handled it. They brought along about a half dozen and I think I'm only using four.


Are u able to control your HD with Lutron app? and how?


----------



## Technos

SkippyJustice said:


> Still having problems. Spoke to the seller and we are going to add repeaters in every room. My house is a two story, 2500 sq ft home. It is almost square. The maximum distance from the hub (which is almost in the center of the house) is probably 25-35 ft. I am now adding repeaters to shades that are maybe 15 ft away from the hub. I have a 75 MB down, 75 MB up Fiber Optic connection with a Nighthawk router so it isn't the network. It is absurd that HD cannot make a solution that has a range that extends beyond a few feet. It is not like wireless technology is brand new either. Even more hilarious, I have to pay for each of the repeaters so that the $10-11K system I bought can work. Great job HD. Your crack team of 1970s engineers is doing a wonderful job. Maybe your next automated solution can release a flock of carrier pigeons that can pull on the shade cord while crapping all over my house. $10K. This system should work...


Please note repeaters are not always the solution either, how about a Trendnet Extender.......
You should have gone to retailer who is a pro, or used a certified Master Installer from Hunter Douglas and you would not run into this silly problem. There is a reason why the remote does not provide more range, it has simply to do with FCC rules, and please stop whinning it just sounds silly.


----------



## Technos

wkearney99 said:


> None of my Pebble remotes has had any trouble communicating with the shades assigned to them. From what I can tell the remotes are assigned to the shades separately from the hub/network. The hub software shows nothing regarding the remotes, leading me to believe they're not integrated with each other at all. Which is kind of unfortunate as it would be handy to be able to use the pebble buttons to perhaps trigger other activities (like coordinated lighting or home automation). No options for that at all.
> 
> As I've said, I needed top-down shades and HD is the only supplier for that style. If all you need are regular bottom-up shades, consider going with Lutron instead.


If you have a Hub/Network your remotes should be assigned to the same network id. If not your installer goofed. If you have a Hub, the remote control has to have the same network id as the hub, if not you will have issues down the road
Note you can coordinate lighting or home automation with a network adapter connected to the hub.


----------



## wkearney99

Technos said:


> Please note repeaters are not always the solution either, how about a Trendnet Extender.......
> You should have gone to retailer who is a pro, or used a certified Master Installer from Hunter Douglas and you would not run into this silly problem. There is a reason why the remote does not provide more range, it has simply to do with FCC rules, and please stop whinning it just sounds silly.


You know what sounds silly? Signing into an enthusiast-oriented forum like this and copping an insulting tone with long term members here. That and ignoring your browser's red underline spell check.

As for FCC rules, if you're privy to the FCC specifics on these particular remotes and shades then, please, post the detailed explanation. Because you're likely not in on that information and posturing about it really does nothing to help the community of members here.

So take it back a notch and tune into the members-helping-members vibe. Or not, you're free to go elsewhere.


----------



## benmargolin

*new blinds.com motorized blinds == HD platinum whitelabel?*

I just ordered some blinds.com motorized blinds, after having ordered some maybe a year ago as well. The previous ones had these Chinese "Dooya" motors in them with really cheesy RF remotes, but I was able to figure out how to control them with a www_rfxcom_com/RFXtrx433E-USB-43392MHz-Transceiver/en RFXtrx433 and so figured eventually I'd order more.

I ended up talking to ones of the sales consultants and was surprised that they don't carry those any longer, but have a new "remotelift 2.0" remote & motor combo, supposedly manufactured in the USA (!). Well, I'd like to control these too, but got the www1_americanblinds_com/infopages/pdfs/sig-cell-remote-guide.pdf manual and realized it's 2.4ghz not 433mhz like the Dooyas. No go. But I figured these must be similar to some other remotes, and Google reverse image-search (!) led me to hunter-douglas, which has essentially identical remotes (and instructions) for the "Platinum technology" line. And there is this whole powerhub thing which looks super promising, if indeed this is just whitelabel HD stuff.

Anyhow, I don't have any new info to add to the thread except that I might have found a slightly lower-cost provider of blinds with the same automation system. I won't get my blinds until mid-December, and have ordered a HD wall-switch, and will try to get a hub as well. If it all works, I'll report back, as I see there's docs_openhab_org/addons/bindings/hdpowerview/readme.html bindings for OpenHAB 2.0, which would be nearly perfect for me (I run 1.8 right now but am considering upgrading).

More info when I have it  (Sorry for link weirdness, I haven't posted much before and wasn't allowed to include them normally)


----------



## wkearney99

PowerRise (used by Platinum, iirc) was a previous generation of their wireless system. PowerView is different, using a round remote not the stick-kind. I don't believe there's much overlap or compatibility.

As for the 'white label' euphemism, sometimes items are marketed differently in other countries and use essentially the same stuff. Sometimes it's just an outright rip-off of another company's products. And in other situations it's actually a worse solution masquerading in what looks like the same kind of enclosures/housings. It can be quite a mess. Me, I want stuff that works, not being lured into using stolen tech with inferior performance. Which I say somewhat sarcastically given the lumpy nature of HD's PowerView setup and operation. Granted, it's been _less-worse _than PowerRise. Which makes me even _more skeptical_ of clones.


----------



## wildta

Just a quick update from me:
My system is working better after adding more repeaters (all free from HD but at the price I paid per shade--they should be free!). There are still shades that don't shut or open (they basically miss the signal since these are not two-way) from time to time, which I find really, really annoying for how expensive these shades are. Any miss is basically susceptible to extra solar heat coming into house or security issue as a shade could be left open when it should be shut, and thus potential for valuables being seen through window. Some shades won't open or close all the way based on the schedule, instead they stop in the middle which is really odd because they received the signal to activate but then they don't follow through with the preset open/close position. 

I had one shade that got "lost," it was on the system and then disappeared and I was unable to discover it again through the app. They are replacing it this Friday.

It's been about 11 months since I've had my system and it's still not working as advertised. :-(


----------



## BLIND MAGIC

MatteraDesignInc said:


> If the shades, etc are lowering and raising at different rates it could also be the Motor(s).
> Are some of the shade larger than others? Ask your rep if the Motor is strong enough.


I had one roll shade that operated at 75% of the raise and lower travel speed of the adjacent roll shades. All brand new batteries. I cross tested the adjacent shades by alternating battery packs and determined the problem to be a dead cell in one of the 12 batteries in that one wand.


----------



## wkearney99

I mentioned battery testing a few pages back:

http://www.avsforum.com/forum/162-h...s-powerview-shades-blinds-2.html#post44387033

This is one Lutron mentioned in a training. It's not cheap but it does an excellent job.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000FQG1XE/

The idea is you cannot test a battery reliably by just voltage. A tester that puts a load on it will be better able to determine if the battery is OK. You want to make sure all cells in a pack at at approximately the same level. Otherwise low cells will 'drag down' others and your motors won't work effectively.


----------



## benmargolin

An update of my last post -- I received my blinds on Friday and got to play with a couple of them this weekend.

First one up -- fail. As soon as I applied power and tried the manual button, it dropped straight to the floor! Had jerky motion, etc. Took it down, examined it, seemed like something wasn't adjusted properly, but decided to try another one from the same shipping box and see if it was similar. Second one -- much larger one -- worked perfectly. The remote even said in small print on the back "platinum" so I was pretty certain it'd be compatible with the HD stuff. Anyhow, got it programmed to RF, and then the real test -- trying it with the HD wall switch I bought off ebay. Worked perfectly first try (oh man, way easier to program than the Somfy-based shades I have, too!). Anyhow, final step -- will it work with the PowerView Hub I also, very optimistically, bought on ebay? And it absolutely does, although in the app, it thinks it's a different kind of shade (a bottom-up, not top-down). So maybe the motor is sending the wrong code for what it is, but doesn't matter, as it works fine.

Then I went back to the original one that wasn't working, and disassembled the mechanism a bit, and noticed some metal flashing inside the motor coupling that seemed to be in the way. I scraped that out, got it all back together, and, although I'm not 100% confident it's a longterm perfect fix, it IS completely working now.

So, did blinds.com contract to get the old tech from HD (or whomever made it for them)? Seems so. Are they a reputable company? Also seems so. Do they advertise it as being HD compatible? Not at all, and maybe future ones won't be. But for now, I'm pretty happy... will report again after I get all 6 that I ordered installed, I guess, and can tell if I have signal strength problems etc.


----------



## Jasonn B

VIDEOS! VIDEOS VIDEOS of any of these WORKING.


----------



## wildta

benmargolin said:


> An update of my last post -- I received my blinds on Friday and got to play with a couple of them this weekend.
> 
> So, did blinds.com contract to get the old tech from HD (or whomever made it for them)? Seems so. Are they a reputable company? Also seems so. Do they advertise it as being HD compatible? Not at all, and maybe future ones won't be. But for now, I'm pretty happy... will report again after I get all 6 that I ordered installed, I guess, and can tell if I have signal strength problems etc.


Interesting. Please do keep us updated. Do you have a product link of the item you purchased?


----------



## Chase BC

I just discovered this thread...

We did our entire house in these blinds in May of 2016... We had one blind that failed (mechanical issue) in the first 2 days. 

We experienced lots of reliability problems from May until August. 

I reset all blinds, hub, etc and rebuilt the network quite a few times with no real improvement.

I noticed there were many firmware updates to the hub and a couple for the app. 

After August, things seem to improve. So much so that I have forgot about all the issues. They are working reliably and now fade into the background of my mind... (Like a toaster. They now just work).

We have multiple remotes (both versions) but we find the iOS apps to be the go-to control. 

We have 2 repeaters in a very large house, but I don't really see any issues when they are plugged in or not. 

The best thing was my wife and I got super busy with work from June to September and frankly we were too busy to worry about the frickin blinds being flaky... lol.

Now I am wondering if the updated firmware in the blinds would make a difference. Can these be flashed OTA, what type of interface/cable and software does the HD tech use to flash these?

Of course my wife wanted an HD exclusive design of the blinds so this was our only choice.


----------



## Ziba Ji

how is compatibility with lutron radio ra2


----------



## toog4me

Ziba Ji said:


> how is compatibility with lutron radio ra2


I use a combo of RA2 and Control4 keypads to control mine. I have the powerview shades in every room and much like most folks here, I'm very frustrated with them. They are super buggy and only consistent in being inconsistent. One day the shade works, the next it doesn't. One day it falls asleep, the next three days it works fine. I've had an issue with every single shade. I'm running all of my AV equipment in a rack (processors, receivers, hub, etc) but have three repeaters in every single room. Commands from Control4 always work (I always see the repeaters light up green) but like I said, one shade may not lower as the other ones in the room do. Control4 compatibility is through scenes, not by individual shade, so I know it is not an issue with Control4.

I've replaced the "eyes" as my dealer calls them, batteries, and now they're looking in to something else. But I can say with 100% certainty that I should have gone with Lutron. These are overpriced crap shades.


----------



## Deane Johnson

toog4me said:


> but have three repeaters in every single room.


I would expect 3 repeaters in each room to be troublesome. If I remember correct, Hunter recommends only 1 repeater per room.

Too many signals hitting the shade could be some of the basis of the inconsistency you are experiencing.


----------



## wkearney99

Deane Johnson said:


> I would expect 3 repeaters in each room to be troublesome. If I remember correct, Hunter recommends only 1 repeater per room.
> 
> Too many signals hitting the shade could be some of the basis of the inconsistency you are experiencing.


And barring the existence of ANY means to show the signal levels it's all voodoo and folklore. Seriously, where's the diag tools to better configure this junk?

Were it not for needing top-down functionality I would NEVER have gone with Hunter Douglas. 

When it works it's merely just 'ok'. The motors are a bit louder than I'd like but not a big deal. Battery life seems reasonable, about 18 months when on a daily schedule. But random drop-outs where a shade just decides it "doesn't want to cooperate" are maddeningly annoying. And having NO DEBUGGING TOOLS makes it pretty much impossible to narrow down why.


----------



## vc123

wkearney99 said:


> And barring the existence of ANY means to show the signal levels it's all voodoo and folklore. Seriously, where's the diag tools to better configure this junk?
> 
> Were it not for needing top-down functionality I would NEVER have gone with Hunter Douglas.
> 
> When it works it's merely just 'ok'. The motors are a bit louder than I'd like but not a big deal. Battery life seems reasonable, about 18 months when on a daily schedule. But random drop-outs where a shade just decides it "doesn't want to cooperate" are maddeningly annoying. And having NO DEBUGGING TOOLS makes it pretty much impossible to narrow down why.


As mentioned before, according to the FCC test report below, PowerView appears to be based on Bluetooth LE (the report uses the designation).
https://fccid.io/pdf.php?id=2581486

However, on closer inspection of the report, it looks as if the protocol was "proprietized": instead of using the three BLE advertising channels and any/all remaining 37 data channels, they use only one advert channel (#39/2480 MHz), one standard data channel (2440 MHz) and one non-standard channel (2407MHz).

Assuming, the advert channel is a "real" ble channel, one could try and intercept the signal with a ble sniffer and obtain the signal strength because without knowing the signal propagation pattern one would not get very far. 

Failing that and given enough motivation, one could try an inexpensive RTL-SDR receiver with a down-converter to intercept/decode the raw RF signal which may be tricky due to the fact that the 2.4GHz band is pretty crowded.

Of course, all this activity would not be necessary if whoever designed PowerView RF part knew what he/she/they were doing.


----------



## wkearney99

vc123 said:


> Of course, all this activity would not be necessary if whoever designed PowerView RF part knew what he/she/they were doing.


Ding, ding! Give that man a prize for that quote.

It's always a fresh disappointment when a vendor takes a perfectly useful protocol and effs it up. 

But if it's 'close enough' to actual BLE then I suppose there's a small chance of being able to at least debug it with BLE tools.


----------



## vc123

wkearney99 said:


> But if it's 'close enough' to actual BLE then I suppose there's a small chance of being able to at least debug it with BLE tools.


When I played last year with a TI sensortag trying to convert it to an Eddystone to measure temp/humidity outside, I started with a Nordic sniffer. I chose it instead of the TI sniffer because the Nordic one could scan all three advert channels simultaneously while the TI sniffer could do only one channel at a time. However, I ended up returning the Nordic one and getting a cheap TI dongle because the former sensitivity was pretty poor. The TI usb dongle based on the CC2540 chip I got worked quite well for my purposes. It is similar if not identical to this one:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-CC2540-...E-4-0-Adapter-Protocol-Analyzer-/261526828093

The software, SmartRF Packet Sniffer, freely downloadable from the TI website is pretty crude, but adequate in the sense that one can see actual packets and the signal strength.


----------



## Ziba Ji

Did any one try to convert their power rise blinds to power view?


----------



## Ziba Ji

wkearney99 said:


> And barring the existence of ANY means to show the signal levels it's all voodoo and folklore. Seriously, where's the diag tools to better configure this junk?
> 
> Were it not for needing top-down functionality I would NEVER have gone with Hunter Douglas.
> 
> When it works it's merely just 'ok'. The motors are a bit louder than I'd like but not a big deal. Battery life seems reasonable, about 18 months when on a daily schedule. But random drop-outs where a shade just decides it "doesn't want to cooperate" are maddeningly annoying. And having NO DEBUGGING TOOLS makes it pretty much impossible to narrow down why.


If you think power view is buggy crap, tell me about platinum power rise  it is pain in down there some where, not in the neck lol


----------



## Jasonn B

Ziba Ji said:


> Did any one try to convert their power rise blinds to power view?


No need to. I can show you how to automate the power rise easily. That's what I did, and it's super reliable.


----------



## Ziba Ji

Jasonn B said:


> No need to. I can show you how to automate the power rise easily. That's what I did, and it's super reliable.


Thanks Jason, would you mind kindly pm me details?


----------



## John1948

wkearney99 said:


> I've got 15 of the new PowerView shades, in four rooms. It's a newly built house (no old materials or RF-blocking lead paint). It's 3 stories, including basement, with a mostly open floorplan.
> 
> The mesh RF setup is uneven, at best. But then I'm only a few days into owning them. I expected a bit of rearranging was going to be necessary. The hub (their RF-to-ethernet bridge) had to be moved up to the Master Bedroom (along with a Tivo, wired Chromecast, Amazon FireTV and other gear). I've got their repeaters in the other rooms. The repeaters are positioned such that they're in-between the shades for that room and the hub. As in, upstairs shades -> hub -> repeater -> 1st floor shades.
> 
> The initial experience is, to be kind, uneven. If I use the PowerView remote (the pebble) to manually join the shades to it that seemed to work. But in the master bedroom one of them has decided not to answer to the remote. Likewise, two of the five in the living room don't seem to want to respond consistently.
> 
> The app on iOS is not great. For one, it has NO SECURITY AT ALL. Nor does it have a non-editing mode. Right, so anyone with access to my WiFi network has the ability to do ANYTHING to the setup of the hub! Who the Hell thought this was a good idea? Ok, so that's BAD. But to make things worse, there's no read-only mode. So I can't put the app on anything accessible to anyone else in the house. At least not without risking someone accidentally making unintended changes to the configuration.
> 
> There's also no technical information accessible for troubleshooting. No way to tell the strength a given device has to the RF network. So placement of the hubs and repeaters is pretty much blind hit-and-miss guesswork.



I was considering purchasing quite a number of HD Powerview honeycomb but this thread has really caused me major concern regarding their reliability. 

Can anyone comment if the HD Powerview shades have improved in reliability since the last posting, approximately a year ago? 

Thanks for any input!

John


----------



## Jasonn B

John1948 said:


> I was considering purchasing quite a number of HD Powerview honeycomb but this thread has really caused me major concern regarding their reliability.
> 
> Can anyone comment if the HD Powerview shades have improved in reliability since the last posting, approximately a year ago?
> 
> Thanks for any input!
> 
> John


Mine work great! Have been controlling them from my Iphone with X10 for over 4 years now I think.


----------



## Deane Johnson

John1948 said:


> I was considering purchasing quite a number of HD Powerview honeycomb but this thread has really caused me major concern regarding their reliability.
> 
> Can anyone comment if the HD Powerview shades have improved in reliability since the last posting, approximately a year ago?
> 
> Thanks for any input!
> 
> John


The PowerView shades have been under constant revision and improvement since their inception. Hunter just released a new updated Hub.


----------



## wkearney99

John1948 said:


> I was considering purchasing quite a number of HD Powerview honeycomb but this thread has really caused me major concern regarding their reliability.
> 
> Can anyone comment if the HD Powerview shades have improved in reliability since the last posting, approximately a year ago?


The mechanisms have held up well, no problems. Battery life continues to be around two years+. I saw elsewhere there's new version of the hub. My dealer provided me with one but I've yet to re-do all the shade and remote pairings. 

If I hadn't needed top/down motion (not just the usual bottom/up kind) I would have gone with Lutron shades instead. I have their lighting and their RF coverage is PERFECT. But since they only make bottom/up shades I had to shop elsewhere. If you're good with bottom/up shade motion and Lutron's range of colors and options works for you then I'd strongly recommend you consider them instead.


----------



## thebland

Are these shades wireless or hard wired?

Hard to imagine these issues if hard wired (I hope).


----------



## wkearney99

They're wireless. Hard wired presents a whole different range of complications/expense. And I think they're still likely to use wireless for control, the wire being more for powering the motors.


----------



## thebland

wkearney99 said:


> They're wireless. Hard wired presents a whole different range of complications/expense. And I think they're still likely to use wireless for control, the wire being more for powering the motors.


Actually, it’s just the opposite. Hard wired shades all wire to a central module rather than relying on the wireless signal from each and every shade that may or may not drop off the network. 

But I get it. If it’s not new construction, wireless is likely the best if not only option. 

We’re in new construction, so will hard wire the shades.


----------



## wkearney99

thebland said:


> Actually, it’s just the opposite. Hard wired shades all wire to a central module rather than relying on the wireless signal from each and every shade that may or may not drop off the network.
> 
> But I get it. If it’s not new construction, wireless is likely the best if not only option.
> 
> We’re in new construction, so will hard wire the shades.


Well, make sure your builder understands this. And your drywallers. And your window installers. And that the framing is such that there's room to accommodate the wires. And that you don't violate your new window warranty by drilling holes in the jambs. Oh, and good luck trying to use tricks like leaving wires "somewhere nearby" if the walls are going to be spray foam insulated.


----------



## thebland

wkearney99 said:


> Well, make sure your builder understands this. And your drywallers. And your window installers. And that the framing is such that there's room to accommodate the wires. And that you don't violate your new window warranty by drilling holes in the jambs. Oh, and good luck trying to use tricks like leaving wires "somewhere nearby" if the walls are going to be spray foam insulated.


Not an issue at all. Window contacts as well are going to be hard wired. We have a quote from one low voltage company and another local guy I’ve talked to both recommend such as well. It’s the typical way of installing in our area for new construction. I’m not sure where you’re getting your info, but hard wiring is always the preferred method be it from Lutron or the local installers. I believe the hard wired shades are far less bulky and esthetically pleasing them the wireless, battery models. Regarding the windows, no way my wife would allow stick-on window sensors on the gorgeous windows !

Also, the windows are installed now and electrical and low voltage will be done (obviously) prior to insulation and drywalling. So, windows and wiring for shades will already be in place prior to insulation and drywall. 

It could be more regional where you're at but most new construction here is all hardwired (security, shades, etc). That said, most windows that will require shades do not open.


----------



## wkearney99

You may have missed my points.

Insulation is a factor. Spray foam insulation is great for energy savings. It's hell for wiring though.

Likewise, framing structure can be a factor. King studs, or even triple studs make for a challenge. Especially if the framed opening is very close to the window casing dimensions. Doesn't leave much room for wire.

Lastly, many window makers have very specific warranty limitations if you start drilling holes through things.

I don't disagree that hard-wiring for power is definitely advantageous. But not all circumstances make it practical, even during new construction. It's critical to have coordinated efforts between the contractor doing the BLINDS and the builder.


----------



## smoothtlk

wkearney99, All of what you say is accurate, but it's all part of normal building obstacles. Every trade understands. If you hire a good team, then they respect each other's work (ie: the drywaller knows not to cut wires).

The framing openings et al are business as usual.

Inadvertent cutting of wires is the largest issue. Good routing and metal plates where wires are close to drywall screw depth is standard good practice.

Coordination of trades is sometimes challenging but what a good General Contractor does all day long.

Spray foam - another normal deal. The issue is removing a wire once spray foamed. And getting wires through it. That's why we overwire during new construction to minimize the need to do it again later.


----------



## wkearney99

well, reality often proves otherwise. sales pitches notwithstanding.


----------



## smoothtlk

wkearney99 said:


> well, reality often proves otherwise. sales pitches notwithstanding.


Every day reality.
How many wired security systems do you think are installed daily?
Wired blinds?

Hundreds per day, I am sure.

Nothing you mentioned is non-typical things to deal with.

Not quite sure what the question is...
If your statement is use wireless - ok, when one can't wire. Glad it's working for you.
If your statement is be careful if you wire - yes, got that.
Batteries? yuk. Only if no other options other than manual.
Solar? a little clunky, but maybe better than getting out a ladder every few months replacing some blind's battery. But the nicads will always have a limited life.


----------



## wkearney99

I've been seeing two+ years for batteries. Seems pretty reasonable, windows get cleaned more often than that, so adding a step to change them out is pretty trivial. These being regular alkaline cells, not nicads. 

I get it, you want to sell other things. That's fine. I'm thinking you've about added all the pitch this thread needs, right?


----------



## smoothtlk

"I get it, you want to sell other things. That's fine. I'm thinking you've about added all the pitch this thread needs, right?"
?? What is being pitched here? BTW, our system supports wireless and wired products so from a professional perspective, unbiased other than to provide support with best strategies (ie: wired if new construction).

the nicad was just extrapolating on the solar tidbit.

The problem with batteries is that they don't all go bad at the same time. Kinda like light bulbs. So it's a constant issue - not every two years. If you have multiple blinds it will be semi-monthly one of them will be going out. For lights, I tend to replace all the high ones at one time when the ladder is already up and extended. Even when they are still working. Blinds might be the same way.


----------



## jjsmd

Hi

I was wonering if someone can tell me if the HD pebble remote uses rf frequency to communicate with the shade ( and if so is it the usual 433 mHz) or is BLE transmission between the remote and the shade?

Thanks
Joe


----------



## fherrera3

benmargolin said:


> An update of my last post -- I received my blinds on Friday and got to play with a couple of them this weekend.
> 
> First one up -- fail. As soon as I applied power and tried the manual button, it dropped straight to the floor! Had jerky motion, etc. Took it down, examined it, seemed like something wasn't adjusted properly, but decided to try another one from the same shipping box and see if it was similar. Second one -- much larger one -- worked perfectly. The remote even said in small print on the back "platinum" so I was pretty certain it'd be compatible with the HD stuff. Anyhow, got it programmed to RF, and then the real test -- trying it with the HD wall switch I bought off ebay. Worked perfectly first try (oh man, way easier to program than the Somfy-based shades I have, too!). Anyhow, final step -- will it work with the PowerView Hub I also, very optimistically, bought on ebay? And it absolutely does, although in the app, it thinks it's a different kind of shade (a bottom-up, not top-down). So maybe the motor is sending the wrong code for what it is, but doesn't matter, as it works fine.
> 
> Then I went back to the original one that wasn't working, and disassembled the mechanism a bit, and noticed some metal flashing inside the motor coupling that seemed to be in the way. I scraped that out, got it all back together, and, although I'm not 100% confident it's a longterm perfect fix, it IS completely working now.
> 
> So, did blinds.com contract to get the old tech from HD (or whomever made it for them)? Seems so. Are they a reputable company? Also seems so. Do they advertise it as being HD compatible? Not at all, and maybe future ones won't be. But for now, I'm pretty happy... will report again after I get all 6 that I ordered installed, I guess, and can tell if I have signal strength problems etc.


Hi Benjamin:

Im in the same situation. I bought the powerview hub 1st gen on ebay. But the app cant find the shades.

How did you make it work?

Thanks,
Fernando


----------



## Deane Johnson

jjsmd said:


> Hi
> 
> I was wonering if someone can tell me if the HD pebble remote uses rf frequency to communicate with the shade ( and if so is it the usual 433 mHz) or is BLE transmission between the remote and the shade?
> 
> Thanks
> Joe


Yes, it is RF, but I don't know the frequency.


----------



## adypana

fherrera3 said:


> Hi Benjamin:
> 
> Im in the same situation. I bought the powerview hub 1st gen on ebay. But the app cant find the shades.
> 
> How did you make it work?
> 
> Thanks,
> Fernando


did you try this?

youtube.com/watch?v=-014MWE22oE


----------



## Paul Horowitz

fwiw, i measured the current drain of the powerview remote thingy (white, round, 2" diameter, model 1010512198, takes 2 CR2032 cells) when it's doing nothing; it's approx 150uA. Since the CR2032 is rated at 225mAh, you can expect about 1500 hours of shelf life, which is just 2 months. That explains why it didn't last one season! A good circuit designer would have done much better.


----------



## Deane Johnson

Paul Horowitz said:


> fwiw, i measured the current drain of the powerview remote thingy (white, round, 2" diameter, model 1010512198, takes 2 CR2032 cells) when it's doing nothing; it's approx 150uA. Since the CR2032 is rated at 225mAh, you can expect about 1500 hours of shelf life, which is just 2 months. That explains why it didn't last one season! A good circuit designer would have done much better.


The accelerometer also causes drain. It turns the thing on and all the lights when it is moved. That feature can be turned off and on by holding the 6 button down until the lights flash.


----------



## johnstang

*Pebble not going into programming mode*

Hi, I'm trying to set the lower limit of my roller shades, but I can't get into programming mode on my pebble. When I hold down the stop button, backlit slow pulses. But as soon as I let go, it goes back into standard mode. I've tried holding it down 4, 6, 12 seconds. Has anyone encountered this?


----------



## nielsvdw70

Jasonn B said:


> No need to. I can show you how to automate the power rise easily. That's what I did, and it's super reliable.


Can you please share how you did automate your Powerrise? Many tx!


----------



## wkearney99

The newest hub has no serial port, is it possible to continue using an older hub in conjunction with the new one? As in, just use the old hub for the serial control?


----------



## Jasonn B

nielsvdw70 said:


> Jasonn B said:
> 
> 
> 
> No need to. I can show you how to automate the power rise easily. That's what I did, and it's super reliable.
> 
> 
> 
> Can you please share how you did automate your Powerrise? Many tx!
Click to expand...

See attached. Then plug that into an X10 controllable outlet and boom. Done!


----------



## Dave-T

I have five 57” wide x 80” high PowerView Silhoutte a deuxs which is two motors per shade a silhoutte in front and a darkening g shade in the back. I also have a smaller Silhoutte a deux In my kitchen as well a Lumenette on my 3 paine sliding glass door. The batteries do not last 2 years, maybe 6 months because we raise and lower the more than once a day. Our lumenette is not battery powered like all of the others it is hardwired. We do not use the pebbles because everything is connected to Alexa as well as our Lutron Caseta light switches. We also have the Gen2 hub which is much more reliable and has better range than the Gen1 hub. The PowerView app is extremely reliable and issues are rare. at least for us We also live in a condo with 69 other units so there are 69 other WiFi networks just in our building alone that does not include the two other two condo building one being on our right and the other on our left.


----------



## funky54

wkearney99 said:


> I've been seeing two+ years for batteries. Seems pretty reasonable, windows get cleaned more often than that, so adding a step to change them out is pretty trivial. These being regular alkaline cells, not nicads.
> 
> I get it, you want to sell other things. That's fine. I'm thinking you've about added all the pitch this thread needs, right?


I'm sorry but folks are trying to help you and your not listening. You want to prove your path is the right one and you came to this thread because it was'nt working. Windows can just about always be wired for shades. Usually inside mount or at minimum outside mount. There are very very few windows that a security wire can't be implemented. As long as your on the right side of the seal and not compromising structural integrity your wire is good to go. I've wired literally thousands of windows and doors. I've wired hundreds of window shades. 

People want to help but you'll have to realize someone might know more than you about it.


----------



## pilgrimpete

*HD Powerview and LightLock*

I had 4 Hunter Douglas shades installed back in December in my media room, along with Powerview.

They are the Duette honeycomb shades with the light blocking lining and we also got the LightLock channels put in on the sides for each blind. I use the room for video games and movies and the long window at the back was a killer when the sun was out and especially low and in the west - basically rendered the screen on the opposite wall unusable.

The Light Lock system claims 100% but I would say that after some extra work from the installer and my constructive criticism, it is probably in the high 90's but not 100. HD, the vendor and I eventually settled on a slightly modified installation price as we all agreed it was not 100% (albeit very close). The installer added extra channels at the bottom as well which was not spec but worked way better in our installation.

The Powerview system works well - the pebble is good but limited so I hardly use it. 

The Alexa integration is as clumsy as most 3rd party Alexa integration and that is more a criticism of Amazon Alexa than Hunter Douglas. I forget the exact, lengthy syntax to open or close the blinds so I won't be bothering with that until it gets fixed, if ever.

The Powerview app on the phone is my favorite way to control the blinds and I especially like the set-it-and-forget it (scenes) for automated blinds opening to certain points, at certain points of the day. It is not so good on my Apple Watch but I've noticed a few apps not being great there either so probably an Apple Watch issue.
It does work on my Harmony Elite and I have it integrated with some of my Harmony scenes but again, it's better to just fire it up on the phone app in my opinion, for anything more than all up or all down.
The batteries are holding out well so far but we are only 3 or so months in. I tend to only open/close the blinds a couple of times a day on the weekends and they stay down most of the week.

It is a very nice system and works well to block light when it is not needed but also keep the room bright and airy when not in use for games and movies. It passed the WAF and she likes to demonstrate it to visitors more than I do.

I have pictures and videos if anyone is interested in this sort of installation - just let me know. There wasn't much around when we first looked to get this installed late last year although we'd seen other installations that used some form of side channel for light blocking.


----------



## Jasonn B

Definitely post pics and or vids!!!


----------



## pilgrimpete

*Hunter Douglas Powerview and LightLock in a media room*

Sorry for the delay. Pictures and videos as promised.

I had some from a few weeks back but they were just so-so. These are from this morning (snow day with a delayed start at work) so I did some new ones. 

I put the videos in spoiler tags to save some space on the page for those not interested. 

The iPhone camera does compensate for light a bit but you should get the rough idea of how dark it gets. Now the worst offender in the room is the gap under and around the door.



Spoiler







 Front of room, blinds down






Back of room, blinds down






Back of room, blinds up






Single blind down






Single blind up






Screen when blinds are up, then down (if you look at the Congressman's name plaque, you can see the reflection of the window on the opposite wall. The Sun would laugh at the previous, slat blinds and shine right on through so we could only use the room at night). This demo would be better in the spring or summer but you get the idea.


----------



## Jasonn B

Wow! When you say "if anyone wants a few pics let me know" then I say yea, give us some pics, etc. You over delivered! lol. Simply awesome man. Looks great and this will help a ton of people. There are a ton of lurkers on here that never post.

I need to do a video of my setup! I have the hunter platinum 2.0 shades but have been controlling them from my iphone for over 7 years with an awesome app and paid nothing to do it. Some tricks with x10. I just got lucky. I automated them from my phone before hunter even offered it!!


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## Deane Johnson

Pilgrim Pete, it appears from the photos that there is a white strip between the front and back channels (painted woodwork showing). I would expect this to allow some light to filter through via reflection. If this is happening, I would recommend you run some experiments with one them blacked out. In the likely event you don't want to use paint, at least for testing, use some totally black velvet (not felt). You can just lay a correct size strip in the bottom and perhaps use some double sided tape to hold the sides while testing.

I've had total blackout for home theater for about 20 years now, and I learned the hard way that light may not turn corners, but it sure reflects off of surfaces a lot to get into your room. Stopping reflections off of surfaces with either black velvet or flat black paint changes a lot.


----------



## pilgrimpete

Deane Johnson said:


> Pilgrim Pete, it appears from the photos that there is a white strip between the front and back channels (painted woodwork showing). I would expect this to allow some light to filter through via reflection. If this is happening, I would recommend you run some experiments with one them blacked out. In the likely event you don't want to use paint, at least for testing, use some totally black velvet (not felt). You can just lay a correct size strip in the bottom and perhaps use some double sided tape to hold the sides while testing.
> 
> I've had total blackout for home theater for about 20 years now, and I learned the hard way that light may not turn corners, but it sure reflects off of surfaces a lot to get into your room. Stopping reflections off of surfaces with either black velvet or flat black paint changes a lot.


Thanks for the feedback.

I should have been more detailed. Once the installer added that bottom channel, I had no more light leakage there. The leakage at the top was also dealt with by cramming black rubber strips in between the window frame and the blind, which is Hunter Douglas spec fix and you can't tell looking at it.

The issue for me is that the LightLock channels do reflect light, despite the "patented technology". I have some photos I can use to show you so I'll try to attach.
Note that these are older pictures, from before the bottom channel was added, so the bottom light leak is 100% fixed - just the sides still do this glow in daylight.

It's not that bad if you look directly at the window but off-angle, its noticeable if you want pure dark. That said, as soon as I fire something up on screen, it is not noticeable at all.

The patented technology (which looks to me like shallow, vertical grooves in the plastic side channels) just does not appear to work as described. They are supposed to somehow trap or reflect the light back out but I don't see that in my installation. However, I find the installation more than satisfactory and it is a thousand times better than the original blinds installation.


Edited to say the first image is on its side and I can't see how to rotate it. Funny as the original is fine. You should get the idea still.


----------



## wkearney99

I take it those are Duette shades? What size are your pleats? 

You have a picture posted of the bottom of the channel, showing white trim paint.

I think Deane is talking about that white strip, where painting it black would help cut down on reflected light bouncing into the trough and back up into the room.

What does it look like inside the upright left/right sections? Is that also showing the white trim through there? I can't quite make it out from that picture.


----------



## pilgrimpete

wkearney99 said:


> I take it those are Duette shades? What size are your pleats?
> 
> You have a picture posted of the bottom of the channel, showing white trim paint.
> 
> I think Deane is talking about that white strip, where painting it black would help cut down on reflected light bouncing into the trough and back up into the room.
> 
> What does it look like inside the upright left/right sections? Is that also showing the white trim through there? I can't quite make it out from that picture.


Oh I see what you mean.


Worth looking into. I'll experiment with that strip at the bottom as Deane suggests.


The shades are Duette Architella. I have no idea what the pleat size was and it was not listed on the invoice for the work done.


----------



## Deane Johnson

I can't get a good feel for it, but the light leak on the sides appears to be from the painted woodwork showing on the sides as it does on the bottom. Not sure if that's true, but if it's not painted or covered with black velvet, you're guaranteed that sort of leak. One thing you have to do is get rid of all the reflected light that is literally bouncing through.

BTW, those appear to be 3/4" pleats. You can measure them. They're either 3/8" or 3/4" and they look far too large in the photos for 3/8".


----------



## pilgrimpete

Deane Johnson said:


> I can't get a good feel for it, but the light leak on the sides appears to be from the painted woodwork showing on the sides as it does on the bottom. Not sure if that's true, but if it's not painted or covered with black velvet, you're guaranteed that sort of leak. One thing you have to do is get rid of all the reflected light that is literally bouncing through.
> 
> BTW, those appear to be 3/4" pleats. You can measure them. They're either 3/8" or 3/4" and they look far too large in the photos for 3/8".



The side channels are a 'U' shape and so there is no white paint in there. The LightLock is the channel which is U shaped and had the vertical grooves that run the entire length.


I found a picture that will show it much better than my descriptions.


----------



## Deane Johnson

pilgrimpete said:


> Oh I see what you mean.
> 
> 
> Worth looking into. I'll experiment with that strip at the bottom as Deane suggests.
> 
> 
> The shades are Duette Architella. I have no idea what the pleat size was and it was not listed on the invoice for the work done.


I re-examined the original photos you posted and I see the shade hardware is a light color, sort of towards white. That's unbelievable to me. It should be black. Think about that white bottom rail settling into the white bottom channel. There's no way you could be more assured of light leakage than with that setup.

It could have been ordered with black hardware at no extra cost. With the black framework it would look just fine and would be another step toward complete blackout. FYI, the black hardware order code is 048.

Since you don't have it, all is not lost. I would experiment with a strip of black velvet glued to the bottom of the bottom rail that sets down on a blackened woodwork strip that is white now. There is not reason you can't have 100% light stoppage at the bottom. The sides will be a bit tougher.

If there is any leakage at the top, we can help figure that out also with good photos.

This is a beautiful visual installation, I'm thinking it just needs some cleaning up.

EDIT: I just saw your new posted photo of the side channels. Light leak on the sides will be hard to clean up. These Duette shades will have white to the outside and that only worsens the challenge at hand. Are these pretty much new shades? I thought Hunter had improved the new version they're pushing now.


----------



## wkearney99

Hunter has so many different styles/colors and not all dealers are totally up to speed on what's the right thing to use, especially in a situation like this. Balancing between daylight looks/decor and blackout functionality is a hard combination. Made more challenging when the installer may not have a lot of experience with how some of them aren't the best solution.


----------



## Deane Johnson

An interesting sidelight on this issue. Several years ago a member of this form posted a lengthy article on how he completely disassembled a PowerRise shade and painted the hardware black. He did a great job and it was nicely documented.

I sent a link to the thread to the head of that division of Hunter and he thought it was ridiculous that someone had to go to that much trouble to get black hardware. He immediately ordered that black hardware be added to the choices when the factory defaults for color are overridden when ordering.


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## Jasonn B

I just want to give a shot out to Deane Johnson. Super helped me out many years ago and still controlling my shades via my iphone for over 7 years.


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## Ozmue

I achieved the same thing by using two corner moldings down the sides. I've got 3 in a room with a projector and they work fine, not complete blockage, but then I don't watch my setup during the day.


As a side benefit, the moldings really cut down on air circulation around the shades. I installed a little black rubber weather stripping on the bottom rail that seals up very nicely.


As a side note, HD is replacing all my shades due to the issue of them locking up randomly. Mine are almost 3 years old and they admitted (finally) that there was a problem with that particular firmware build. If anyone knows where I can get replacement shade controller boards, revision H, I can fix the old ones.


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## wkearney99

Ozmue said:


> As a side note, HD is replacing all my shades due to the issue of them locking up randomly. Mine are almost 3 years old and they admitted (finally) that there was a problem with that particular firmware build. If anyone knows where I can get replacement shade controller boards, revision H, I can fix the old ones.


How readily can you determine the controller board revision? 

I've got one top-down shade that randomly just won't do it's thing. It's inexplicable and not repeatable with any defined steps. Sometimes it just doesn't move. It's in a room with four others (and two more in an adjacent room). They're all getting the commands, it's just this one. I almost never operate them manually via remote or app. All their motion is scheduled. It's only some days I'll notice one didn't raise to fully closed from the night before's scheduled event, or not open from that morning's event. If I manually press the button on the motor it'll move as expected. If I happen to ignore it within a day or so it'll resume behaving properly. I don't even think I have a pebble remote programmed to talk to it, so it's always been hub schedules or the app.


----------



## Ozmue

Doesn't sound like my issue. When my shades stop, they stop responding to any command, via app, pebble or direct http. I've left them for days, hoping they would resurrect themselves, but they never do. I've power cycled them and they still don't respond. I have to either use the app command to re calibrate the shade or press and hold the manual button for about 10 seconds. They then go up and down and resume their normal operation. They remember their designation and work properly until the next failure. Sometimes it takes a week of normal operation, sometimes a day, sometimes two weeks. Not all the shades do this all the time, but most of them eventually do it.


The controller board has a designation sticker on it that will tell you the revision (as does the motor). The app also tells you the firmware revision for the controller and the motor, but not with a letter, a number. I am not at home currently and cannot access that part of the app when connecting remotely( I wish I could). I believe the corrected firmware revision is 1.8 something while the units that fail are 1.3 something.


I have experienced the shades "missing" a command. For example, a shade would remain closed when it was supposed to open. It responds to the pebble command normally and a direct http command. Later that day the affected shade would close properly when it was supposed to close. This does not seem to be related to the shade going offline as I described in the first paragraph.


BTW, I've got the Gen 2 hub and repeater. That cleared up the majority of these missed command issues.


----------



## wkearney99

I also now have the gen 2 hub and repeaters. That did not eliminate the problem, and I don't think it reduced it either. 

All the shades in this room report firmware 1.3.1522 and motor 0.0.128. Nice to see this added to the app, yeesh it had been crude in past revisions.

The curious thing is the wonky shade is not showing any signal bars for signal strength, whereas all the others show four full bars. It does respond to Jog commands and app control. It does return a battery level value, that is tapping it circles for a bit and it comes back with a nearly full battery icon (maybe 1 pixel down?). The others in the same room report likewise, and swapping the packs does nothing to change the problem.

I've kind of learned to avoid caring about it. What I should probably do is move the shade to to a different window (we have several the same size). If just to make it one I'm less likely to notice!


----------



## wkearney99

In checking a little more I've noticed several shades aren't showing a signal strength.

I moved the wonky one to a different place in the room and it's signal strength bar hasn't changed. That is, the shade that was there showed 4 bars. Swapping them and the 'good' shade still shows 4 bars, the wonky one still shows none. 

I'll see if they respond to the scheduled changes tomorrow morning...


----------



## Ozmue

I've got two shades with newer controller boards and motors mounted in an upstairs room that show signal strength of 2 bars and they seem to work flawlessly with that level. All of my other units (old firmware) show 5 bars. 



I assume you've tried to delete the shade and re discover it to no avail. 


I don't know where the "receiver" is located, on the controller board or the motor, but I believe my motors show firmware of .225 (or something like that) so maybe it's the motor? HD said they had a bad batch in the spring of 2016 (they were not clear if it was a bad batch of motors or a bad batch of controllers). I would suggest contacting your dealer and see if they could get HD to send you a replacement controller board and a replacement motor. Not hard to replace the board, but the motor replacement requires taking apart the upper rail. Pretty easily done, just be careful to not tear the fabric of the shade when sliding it back on to the metal rail. 



There's a clip on the long bar next to the furthest string take up spool that needs to be unclipped. Then slide the bar out of the motor, but not out of the nearest take up spool, otherwise the spools will become un coordinated and you will need to relevel the shade once it's back up in the window. The motor comes out of the shade itself via two posts.


I'm still waiting for shipping confirmation on the new shades, but the HD Tech said they were in the works. I'm away for 3 more weeks and they should be at the dealer when I return home.


----------



## wkearney99

.....aaand the wonky shade didn't respond to it's scheduled morning commands... again. I'll contact my dealer and see what they've encountered with firmware variations.


----------



## Deane Johnson

If you have a defective shade and it's still under warranty (under 5 years), your dealer should document it to Hunter for action. They might make a new shade, might ask for the defective one to be sent in for repair, or they may supply a part change that can be done in the field.

After 5 years, they will likely charge for the repairs or remakes.

FYI, the strength of the RF output of the Hub is identical to the RF output of the Pebble remote according to Hunter.


----------



## Dave-T

wkearney99 said:


> .....aaand the wonky shade didn't respond to it's scheduled morning commands... again. I'll contact my dealer and see what they've encountered with firmware variations.


Sometimes if the battery cartridge is crack you will have the problems your talking about. Also if the batteries are dying you will have the problems you are talking about. If you have repeatesr they have to be connected to the scene which is not explained very well in the instructions. I had two repeaters for the longest time and found out that they were not connected to the scenes and as a result they did not work. my installer fixed it when he came to install a new motor on my Sliding glass door lumenette.


----------



## Ozmue

With the Gen2 Hub, repeaters are joined to the network and show up on the list of equipment. You can name them just as you can name the shades. Makes it clear that they're part of the setup


----------



## wkearney99

Dave-T said:


> Sometimes if the battery cartridge is crack you will have the problems your talking about. Also if the batteries are dying you will have the problems you are talking about. If you have repeatesr they have to be connected to the scene which is not explained very well in the instructions. I had two repeaters for the longest time and found out that they were not connected to the scenes and as a result they did not work.


Yes, the battery tray clips are delicate, I see how they could be broken. Thus far mine are all OK. 

I *load test* all my batteries individually before putting them into the sleeves. This to make sure they're all in good condition. Likewise if I have any trouble with a shade I load test the batteries to eliminate them as a suspect. 

This battery tester works quite nicely. It tests by putting a load on the battery cell, not just by measuring voltage.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000FQG1XE

Besides pairing them to the hub, how would you '_connect_' repeaters to a scene?


----------



## Dave-T

wkearney99 said:


> Yes, the battery tray clips are delicate, I see how they could be broken. Thus far mine are all OK.
> 
> I *load test* all my batteries individually before putting them into the sleeves. This to make sure they're all in good condition. Likewise if I have any trouble with a shade I load test the batteries to eliminate them as a suspect.
> 
> This battery tester works quite nicely. It tests by putting a load on the battery cell, not just by measuring voltage.
> https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000FQG1XE
> 
> Besides pairing them to the hub, how would you '_connect_' repeaters to a scene?


I am not talking about the batteries themselves I am talking about the plastic cartridge that they all go into. if the plastic cartridge has a crack in it the blinds become quirky. As for the repeater being linked to a scene, when creating a scene or editing a scene look for edit next to scene items, click it, select the scene and at the bottom will be a icon fir the repeaters and how many you have connected to the hub, place a check mark next to repeater and the scene, click next and scroll over to the repeater not the shade and select the repeater and choose the repeater you want to use in scene. then click save and you are done. let me know if that works.

thanks,

Dave


----------



## wkearney99

Dave-T said:


> I am not talking about the batteries themselves I am talking about the plastic cartridge that they all go into. if the plastic cartridge has a crack in it the blinds become quirky.


Right. But I've swapped out the battery trays between working/intermittent units and it made no difference. 



> As for the repeater being linked to a scene, when creating a scene or editing a scene look for edit next to scene items, click it, select the scene and at the bottom will be a icon fir the repeaters and how many you have connected to the hub, place a check mark next to repeater and the scene, click next and scroll over to the repeater not the shade and select the repeater and choose the repeater you want to use in scene. then click save and you are done. let me know if that works.


Huh, that's a new feature they added to the software. In mine it only lets you select "Repeaters" as a single item, not individual ones. I have three. Whether I "need" three or not is probably a different question. But I have that many and they're not selectible separately when editing a scene. I take it what they're doing here is providing a way for the gen 2 hub to decide whether to send the RF commands just by itself, or also via the repeaters?


----------



## SimplyVast

wildta said:


> Sounds like I'm going to have to purchase a lot more repeaters than I had originally though. Ugh!
> 
> Thank you for your response!


We are Hunter Douglas dealers and hardwired is the way to go how ever, in our Model we have 4 powerview shades with the c batteries and they lasted about 2 years with everyday schedules. As far as the repeaters go I have learned to double what i think is needed. I have been specing at least 1 per room. I really expected alot more distance with the product. My Hub is 20' from a shade and I still needed a repeater in the middle.


----------



## Deane Johnson

One thing to remember about using repeaters is that each is putting out a signal to the shade. The potential exists that if signals from two repeaters reach the shade, it's likely the shade will end up getting a garbled signal and will not function properly. Same issue if the shade gets a signal from the Hub and a repeater, results my be unpredictable.

The Hub, the Pebble and the repeaters all supposedly have the same RF output level.


----------



## Ozmue

Got a chance to use the updated app and saw where it has the repeaters available in the scene. Not sure what it really does, other than a nice place to change the color of the LED. The repeater seems to be activated on every scene I have whether or not I've included it in a particular scene. Is there any documentation available for this new version.


I did notice that the one scene I added the repeater to is now listed in a separate "room" called "Scenes", rather than the room the shades are associated with. And it lists that particular scene as having 2 rooms, despite it having only one shade (and the repeater)



BTW, they made some nice changes to the app. Setting a particular time in relation to sunset and sunrise is MUCH improved!


----------



## Ozmue

I spoke with a rep from HD who explained that the addition of the repeater in a scene is purely cosmetic. You can change the LED color via the scene, but it makes no difference in which repeater sends a signal


----------



## mccltd

*Powerview Status from app and alexa help*

Just had 3 x power view blinds installed into my bay window.
Currently linked one up to the app via the hub and have it running in homekit.
It was running on Alexa as well but for some reason seems to have stopped. I can tell alexa to turn on a scene but blinds do nothing.
Tried removing skill and re adding, adds everything fine but no control when you ask Alexa to turn on /off scene.

Also just got to work and loaded up thinking I could see the status of my blinds but it appears you cant, only select a scene. Seems a bit lacking if it cant do something that simple?


----------



## pilgrimpete

mccltd said:


> Just had 3 x power view blinds installed into my bay window.
> Currently linked one up to the app via the hub and have it running in homekit.
> It was running on Alexa as well but for some reason seems to have stopped. I can tell alexa to turn on a scene but blinds do nothing.
> Tried removing skill and re adding, adds everything fine but no control when you ask Alexa to turn on /off scene.
> 
> Also just got to work and loaded up thinking I could see the status of my blinds but it appears you cant, only select a scene. Seems a bit lacking if it cant do something that simple?



Doesn't sound right. I can see the battery/open status in the HD app and Home (Homekit app) on all my blinds, both at home and at work. 



Home manages things so well that I hardly ever use the PowerView app since the initial setup. I have Home notify me when the blinds open or close when I am away from home. They open around sunrise (to various levels, dependent on where the sun is), one closes around the middle of the day to block the sun and then they all close around sunset.



My four blinds are all in the same room and I don't use the repeater that was part of the package. The hub is hidden away behind the entertainment console but still does a good job keeping touch with the blinds.


I am almost at a year of owning my HD blinds and the battery level is still in the 90% levels which is much better than I was expecting.


----------



## index

Just got our lightlock duette shades installed. When I installed the app 3 or our shades show up as "undefined" type. I can set the type manually, but it doesn't give me the top-down/bottom-up option, which they are.

Upon closer inspection, all 3 shades have an older firmware version. Is there a way to flash these things? Or do j have a tech come out?


----------



## sparksd

Just had new Duette & Applause shades installed and all work fine except that the PowerView Hub won't update its firmware. I've gone through the steps multiple times and it acts like it's doing it - solid amber light for several minutes followed by blinking blue reboot and then solid blue for operational. But the app - on several devices - keeps saying it needs the update. I talked to HD and they said yes, I have tried everything they would recommend (retry, reset, etc.) so I should try taking the hub to the dealer so they could try on their network. A hassle. Anyone else run into this?


----------



## MRahul

*Can we use any modern day Smart Plugin or it has to be X10 Controllable*



Jasonn B said:


> See attached. Then plug that into an X10 controllable outlet and boom. Done!


Jasonn B - Can I use any modern day Smart Plugin such as - TECKIN Smart Plug WiFi Outlet 15A .....OR ......Does it need to be X10 controllable outlet????


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## MRahul

This is for PoweRise (Platinum) Technology Shades from HD.

I read this - Limitation of the HD RF adapter is that it only works with products that open and close (tilting products will not work) and only gives you all open and all close as there is no way to send more than one open and one close command.

What you can't do, is while the blinds are opening, get them to stop

I am curious to know if any one has figured out a solution or suggestion around this other than using the Platinum Bridge Kit.........


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## BIC2

*My PowerView Experience*

I have had HD solar shades with PowerView for a few months now. The upper & lower levels each have 7 shades, most are large, say 8 ft x 8 ft. Have one center hub and two end repeaters on main level. The upper & lower shades are over each other. All essentially on the same back wall. Reception to every shade seems strong. Also have one Pebble remote for each level.

My evaluation after a few months is basically, this PowerView thing is buggy and inconsistent. Sometimes, the hub disappears. Usually can't get it back re-connecting through the app. Sometimes it works on my wife's phone and not mine or vice versa. Sometimes I wait, and the next day the hub works with no intervention. Sometimes re-booting hub works, sometimes it doesn't.

Frequently, the app, after refreshing a shade prior to activation, gets it wrong whether up or down. I suspect that often comes from using the remote, which confuses the PowerView, but not sure. Regardless, the PowerView shade auto-refresh should cure that. I frequently have to refresh two times and sometimes three or four times before it reads the shade status properly. Sometimes, it never reads it properly, then I have to open it on app to then close it or vice versa.

Sometimes, everything seems OK, I'm operating various shades, then get a message, "Error, could not complete your request. Please try again." Usually have to wait this one out as well, maybe a day.

The remote works a lot better, but I need 7 zones, not the 6 available. But, it's not flawless either. Sometimes, if I press all up or down, one shade may miss the call. The shade which misses varies. But, this is relatively rare compared to misfires in PowerView.

Before we bought this, the installer said PowerView works pretty well now in something like its 10th generation. Says he gets few complaints compared to years ago. BTW, when I talked to tech support a while back, they said the battery & signal levels are unreliable in the app. They're working on fixing that.

I haven't tried the scene automation as I have no confidence it would work consistently. As is, if I operate a shade out of sight, I have to go check it anyway. If I had some daily automated operation and we were gone on vacation, I foresee a shade disaster.

My other gripe is the lack of dual-band (5 GHz) WiFi for the hub. Everything else in the house is dual-band. I have to leave our cell phones locked in to 2.4 so as to be able to access PowerView. That deteriorates the WiFi speed for the phones.

What experience have the rest of you had? Thanks.


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## wkearney99

I programmed schedules for ours and very rarely use the app or remotes. 

My hub is hard-wired to Ethernet. For 'infrastructure' stuff like this I have zero desire to add wonky WiFi troubles to the mix.

I have several repeaters in addition to the hub. I can't recall what the specs dictate but mine are probably spaced about 25' max distance between any shades and repeaters.

I started with the dark gray squarish hub and USB-key style repeaters, and had a fair bit of hassle. I upgraded to the newer rounded style of both the hub and the repeaters and it's been a lot less troublesome.

I almost NEVER use the Pebble remotes. I kinda gave up on them when I still had the square hub. I should probably revisit using them, or at least re-pairing them again.

My suggestion, get the latest hub/repeater hardware. Wire a connection to the hub. Add repeaters such that you've got better coverage. That should probably go a long way toward minimizing the hassles.


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## BIC2

The WiFi signal is very strong, don't think that's the problem. I have a lot of WiFi IOT in the house with no WiFi issues. I have the latest hub (Gen 2) & repeaters, all bought new a few months ago. I could hook to Ethernet across the room in a cabinet, but that would weaken Hub's use as a repeater.

I'd say all shades are within about 15 ft or so of a repeater or hub but some walls are involved. If it's an RF location issue, I think that would be consistent with a particular shade. The one's that fail to occasionally operate from the RF remote vary. Thanks.


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## wkearney99

You perhaps miss my point, doesn't really matter about the signal strength. What matters is uninterrupted connectivity. Take Wifi out of the equation and you lose the whole 2.4/5ghz inconvenience, along with any potential WiFi/DHCP network re-negotiating issues and such.

OH, along that tangent, you ARE using static IP addresses and DHCP leases, right?

The hub itself is the source of the signals. Arrange the repeaters to provide signals accordingly.

We did have one shade that really did not like being in one particular location (no idea why). On a whim I moved it to a different window (thankfully they were the same dimensions) and the problem magically went away. I did have to re-do the setup and grouping, but that wasn't terribly difficult.


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## BIC2

Good point. Thanks for elaborating. I'll try Ethernet. May need another repeater. As far as static IP, etc., I don't mess with defaults, but don't think anything I have is static IP.


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## BIC2

wkearney99 said:


> OH, along that tangent, you ARE using static IP addresses and DHCP leases, right?


Connected to Ethernet. Every shade still connects to hub or repeater so good there. I see the PowerView app offers a static IP option. Should I turn that on? What does that do? Thanks.


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## wkearney99

For devices that don't move I greatly prefer using static addresses. But when possible I also set up a DHCP lease to match it. That way if the device gets reset "for whatever reason" it'll get the same IP address as before. 

I find this is a good practice for all devices on the network. On some routers you can go a step further, you can set up leases that are in a range DIFFERENT than the DHCP pool. As in, device addresses 1-150 (or whatever) are set up with leases, but 151-254 is set up to handle the DHCP lease pool. You can adjust this as your network needs require, of course. I find this handy for situations where there's something going on and I don't have the IP address of every single device committed to memory, but I do know if they're above 150 then they're not ones I'd set up previously.

So take the above into consideration as to how you want to have you hub integrate with the rest of your devices.

Oh, and start a spreadsheet of the devices (device name, IP, MAC, etc). I find a google docs sheet file works, but Excel or even plain text would work, up to you.


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## DKKNGHT77

The consensus seems to be that these have somewhat finicky wireless even on the gen two hubs? 

HD knows and we have to spend more money for repeaters when their tech is the problem and doesn’t have the r


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## MarcWalpole

Any one having the PowerView app crash? Won't run on either Android phone,Samsung Note 9 or 10. Have had the app for several years and updates; not problems over that time. I can still control via Alexa and the Hunter Douglas "puck" remote..the Hub 2 is fine...
Thanks


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## BIC2

MarcWalpole said:


> Any one having the PowerView app crash? Won't run on either Android phone,Samsung Note 9 or 10. Have had the app for several years and updates; not problems over that time. I can still control via Alexa and the Hunter Douglas "puck" remote..the Hub 2 is fine...
> Thanks


There was a new firmware update a few days ago, which I did, not sure about an app update. Today, the app stopped working, crashing on both our Note8 phones. Obviously an app issue, I've notified H-D.


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## BIC2

MarcWalpole said:


> Any one having the PowerView app crash? Won't run on either Android phone,Samsung Note 9 or 10. Have had the app for several years and updates; not problems over that time. I can still control via Alexa and the Hunter Douglas "puck" remote..the Hub 2 is fine...
> Thanks


Talked to H-D. Apparently, there are two Android app updates. The first, to 2.7, may occur automatically, but second, to 2.7.1, may need to be done manually though Play Store. I did that and it works now. New app & new firmware should be done to get everything in order.


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## MarcWalpole

Thanks so much; also emailed H-D and received a vesry cordial response saying the update was the problem and a new one was on the way. This AM said update fixed the problem....thanks for your response......it was unusual to have a problem with them as that app/software has been solid for several years...


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## jschmidt123

My powerview+duette/skylift setup does not work reliably. It was installed in 2016 and the firmware on the repeaters (new) and blinds (2016) never updates. I was wondering what firmware versions other people have. I get these versions from the PowerView app on iOS:

Shades: Mix of 1.8.1944 and 1.5.1771
Shade motor: 0.0.152
Shade Type: 10 (which I think means Duette/Applause)

Repeater1: 2.0.2326
Repeater2: 2.0.1298

(I think the Hub did update automatically)
Hub: 2.0.1045
Hub Radio: 2.0.2122

iOS App: 2.7.7/Build 10694.
In addition I get serial numbers from HomeKit app, but I'm not bothering listing those here.

Back on post 98 someone mentioned "firmware H"; I'm not sure how the relates to the versions I gathered above.

Btw, I am wired ethernet with static IP and wired power to all the blinds and 4/4 bars for the "Signal Strength" on all the shades.
The problem is sometimes blinds just stop working or they miss commands. When I say "sometimes", I mean very often, like
75% of the time when I want to open or close all the blinds at least one fails if not more. I have 14 blinds total.
When blinds are completely dead, only thing that helps is power-cycle of the blind.
Other times, I just have to move the blind to a new position then back to the position I want.

Thanks!


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## jschmidt123

index said:


> version


Did you ever get an answer to this? PowerView seems to imply it should be automatic, but mine aren't updating.
What version do you have?
I put my versions in post 199.


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## sparksd

All four of our Duette & Applause Honeycomb shades show f/w 2.1.2313. Hub radio is 2.0.2610, other same as yours.


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## BIC2

@jschmidt123. I'm on Android v2.7.7 Build 3335. Hub is 2.0.1045. All of of my 2019 manufactured shades are 2.2.2754. Four repeaters are on 2.0.2928.


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## wkearney99

For anyone that has these shades and had the motion stop working, I took one of mine apart, figured it out and fixed it. Mine are out of warranty and my dealer had no open appointments anytime soon. I'm handy so I figured, what the hell, let's figure it out.

There are two motors for these top-down, bottom up honeycomb shades. The motor on the left controls the top-down motion. The motor would turn but the shade wasn't moving. Then the bottom would turn and move but stopped.

Note the disconnected shaft from the left motor. It had come loose.

There are two collars with set-screws on the shafts, the one for the left motor had come loose. But it gets more complicated. See that black box in the middle? That's a pair of 'jack shafts' with threaded blocks on them. As the two parts of the shade raise/lower, the turning motion of the shafts moves the blocks left/right. Eventually one block presses against the other, and the motor senses the increase in load, and stops. This is sort of ingenious, as it doesn't require any sort of sensor detecting a position, but rather depends on sensing the motor torque going 'too high'.

The blocks represent the position of the shade top and bottom. As the top lowers, the 'grey' jackshaft moves it's block to the left. When the bottom raises, it moves the black jackshaft (and white block) to the right. This way the shade can't lower the top past where the bottom has already been raised, and vice-versa the bottom can't be pulled up farther than where the top has been lowered.

It's really a pretty ingenious mechanism.

The shafts are loose in the motor because as the jackshafts are moved and torque tightens there's a bit of left/right movement in that black center box. This to keep the unit from twisting itself out of the top rail. The key is to slide the shafts just far enough into the motor to allow for some left/right movement of the center box. The shafts slide in about 1/2" into the motor. I found sliding them in about 5/16" was about right. Then it was a matter of tightening the collar on the shaft so it wouldn't allow the shaft to slide more than 1/4" toward the center box. This way the box can slide left/right but won't push far enough to pull the shaft out of the motor.

The key to getting things lined back up was loosening the shafts from both motors and manually winding up the cords into their little bobbins on the shafts. Once that was done, I had to remove the shafts and manually spin the center box jackshafts so their alignment blocks where toward the right, butted against each other. This being where the top (grey) was raised fully, and the bottom (white) was also raised and butted up against it. As the bottom is lowered, that white block will move to the left. Same with the top gray block, it moves left as the top is lowered. Eventually as you raise/lower the shade parts the alignment blocks will meet, touch, and the motors will stop. The jackshafts do pop out of the black frame but it was easier to use the shafts themselves to spin them, it just took some careful twisting of things to do it without wrecking anything.

The fix takes minutes, but figuring it all out, that took me a while. I hope this helps someone else.

Sorry but I didn't take more pix or make a video.


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