Overcomming 5 min motor autoshutdown

Hi guys, I have huge window, more than 2m height. It takes about 18min to fully open or close the blinds. I discovered that there is some kind of auto shutdown timer inside the motor that shuts the motor after 5 mins. Therefore when I want to fully open or close the blinds I have to manually press up or down 3 times. I was hoping to overcome this auto shutdown via this plugin. Something like checking whether motor is still running and whether it’s inside the min and max possition.

Fyi, I bet you’ll be interested that this plugin works in the following setup:

Homebridge sits inside the VM that is running on a freenas server
inside the VM i have lubuntu which serves as a OS to the homebridge
on the LAN I have a raspberry pi with raspbian, which serves as a usb over ip server
on this rpi I exposed the usb bluetooth module
lubuntu VM connects to the rpi and use the bluetooth module
So.. I control the blinds via bluetooth module that is plugged to the RPi, which serves as usb over ip server to the homebridge on a VM inside he freenas server :-) and it works!

I went back and forth with my setups and currently I'm running dedicated homebridge from rpi (just a clean HB rpi setup with installed bluetooth libraries as described in the readme.md and installed this plugin from plugin screen inside the HB web ui). So far I am playing with a script to have periodic control over the blinds.

Idea is:

to control the blinds with two curl commands in a script
Script will be controlled from HB via something like this: https://github.com/pponce/homebridge-script2
One curl command to control the blinds and one to read the current position of the motor.
These two will be in a loop
One command will be checking the current position
And if it don't meet the target position than the control curl command will be called

Sample of the control curl command: curl -s -X PUT http://homebridge.local:55555/characteristics --data {"characteristics":[{"aid":2,"iid":10,"value":61,"status":0}]} --header "Content-Type:Application/json" --header "authorization: 111-11-111"

Reading the current position: curl -s -X GET http://homebridge.local:55555/characteristics?id=2.11

Problem is, that I don't know which iid is the correct one to use. When calling the command: curl -s -X GET http://homebridge.local:55555/characteristics?id=2.$j in a loop where $j is 0-100 I get these readings: {"characteristics":[{"aid":2,"iid":3,"value":"renssies"}]} {"characteristics":[{"aid":2,"iid":4,"value":"AM43"}]} {"characteristics":[{"aid":2,"iid":5,"value":"AM43 Blind Motor"}]} {"characteristics":[{"aid":2,"iid":6,"value":"xxxxxxxxxxxx"}]} {"characteristics":[{"aid":2,"iid":7,"value":"0.3.0"}]} {"characteristics":[{"aid":2,"iid":9,"value":55}]} {"characteristics":[{"aid":2,"iid":10,"value":2}]} {"characteristics":[{"aid":2,"iid":11,"value":55}]} {"characteristics":[{"aid":2,"iid":14,"value":0}]} {"characteristics":[{"aid":2,"iid":15,"value":100}]} {"characteristics":[{"aid":2,"iid":16,"value":0}]} I assume that iid 9 or 11 is the current position and iid 10 or 14 are target positions. Iid 15 is the battery charge value.

Few months ago when I start playing with this script it kinda worked (but I had other issues with the plugin so I postpone playing with the script to switch to fully dedicated rpi HB). However now with dedicated clean setup I can't make the script to control the blinds.

Anyone to help?

Found this command to check the iid setup: curl -X PUT http://homebridge.local:55555/accessories --header "Content-Type:Application/json" --header "authorization: 111-11-111"

Output is this: { "accessories":[ { "aid":1, "services":[ { "type":"3E", "iid":1, "characteristics":[ { "type":"14", "iid":2, "perms":[ "pw" ], "description":"Identify", "format":"bool" }, { "type":"20", "iid":3, "value":"homebridge.io", "perms":[ "pr" ], "description":"Manufacturer", "format":"string", "maxLen":64 }, { "type":"21", "iid":4, "value":"homebridge", "perms":[ "pr" ], "description":"Model", "format":"string", "maxLen":64 }, { "type":"23", "iid":5, "value":"Homebridge xxxx", "perms":[ "pr" ], "description":"Name", "format":"string", "maxLen":64 }, { "type":"30", "iid":6, "value":"11:11:11:11:11:11", "perms":[ "pr" ], "description":"Serial Number", "format":"string", "maxLen":64 }, { "type":"52", "iid":7, "value":"1.3.4", "perms":[ "pr" ], "description":"Firmware Revision", "format":"string" } ] }, { "type":"A2", "iid":2000000008, "characteristics":[ { "type":"37", "iid":9, "value":"1.1.0", "perms":[ "pr" ], "description":"Version", "format":"string", "maxLen":64 } ] } ] }, { "aid":2, "services":[ { "type":"3E", "iid":1, "characteristics":[ { "type":"14", "iid":2, "perms":[ "pw" ], "description":"Identify", "format":"bool" }, { "type":"20", "iid":3, "value":"renssies", "perms":[ "pr" ], "description":"Manufacturer", "format":"string", "maxLen":64 }, { "type":"21", "iid":4, "value":"AM43", "perms":[ "pr" ], "description":"Model", "format":"string", "maxLen":64 }, { "type":"23", "iid":5, "value":"AM43 Blind Motor", "perms":[ "pr" ], "description":"Name", "format":"string", "maxLen":64 }, { "type":"30", "iid":6, "value":"xxxxxxxxxxx", "perms":[ "pr" ], "description":"Serial Number", "format":"string", "maxLen":64 }, { "type":"52", "iid":7, "value":"0.3.0", "perms":[ "pr" ], "description":"Firmware Revision", "format":"string" } ] }, { "type":"8C", "iid":8, "characteristics":[ { "type":"6F", "iid":12, "perms":[ "pw" ], "description":"Hold Position", "format":"bool" }, { "type":"6D", "iid":9, "value":100, "perms":[ "ev", "pr" ], "description":"Current Position", "format":"uint8", "unit":"percentage", "minValue":0, "maxValue":100, "minStep":1 }, { "type":"72", "iid":10, "value":2, "perms":[ "ev", "pr" ], "description":"Position State", "format":"uint8", "minValue":0, "maxValue":2, "minStep":1, "valid-values":[ 0, 1, 2 ] }, { "type":"7C", "iid":11, "value":100, "perms":[ "ev", "pr", "pw" ], "description":"Target Position", "format":"uint8", "unit":"percentage", "minValue":0, "maxValue":100, "minStep":1 } ] }, { "type":"96", "iid":13, "characteristics":[ { "type":"8F", "iid":16, "value":0, "perms":[ "ev", "pr" ], "description":"Charging State", "format":"uint8", "minValue":0, "maxValue":2, "minStep":1, "valid-values":[ 0, 1, 2 ] }, { "type":"79", "iid":14, "value":0, "perms":[ "ev", "pr" ], "description":"Status Low Battery", "format":"uint8", "minValue":0, "maxValue":1, "minStep":1, "valid-values":[ 0, 1 ] }, { "type":"68", "iid":15, "value":100, "perms":[ "ev", "pr" ], "description":"Battery Level", "format":"uint8", "unit":"percentage", "minValue":0, "maxValue":100, "minStep":1 } ] } ] } ] }

Hi guys, I figured it out.

I ended up using this plugin for it's super easy logic: https://github.com/cr3ative/homebridge-shell-switch In the config you just set it up this way:

{
            "accessory": "ShellSwitch",
            "name": "Blinds Up Switch",
            "onCmd": "/var/lib/homebridge/control/blinds_up.sh",
            "offCmd": "/var/lib/homebridge/control/blinds_down.sh"
 }

Plugin is calling two from these three scripts:

Helper script that opens the blinds up: blinds_up.sh
Helper script that close the blinds down: blinds_down.sh
Core script that does the job: change_blinds.sh

blinds_up.sh and blinds_down.sh just call the change_blinds.sh and set the parameter to 100 or 0 (target position).

blinds_up.sh:

#!/bin/bash
/bin/bash /var/lib/homebridge/control/change_blinds.sh 100

blinds_down.sh:

#!/bin/bash
/bin/bash /var/lib/homebridge/control/change_blinds.sh 0

change_blinds.sh:

#!/bin/bash
aid=2
CURRENT_POSITION_iid=9
TARGET_POSITION_iid=11
IP=192.168.0.109
PORT=55555
KEY=111-11-111
TARGET_POSITION=$1
CURRENT_POSITION=`curl -s -X GET http://$IP:$PORT/characteristics?id=$aid.$CURRENT_POSITION_iid | jq '..|.value?|select(. != null)'`
RUN_EVERY_SECONDS=10

echo "Current position: "$CURRENT_POSITION
echo "Target position: "$TARGET_POSITION

if ! [[ $TARGET_POSITION =~ ^[0-9]+$ ]] ; then
  echo "error: Target position is not a number!!!" >&2; exit 1
fi

while [ "$CURRENT_POSITION" != "$TARGET_POSITION" ]; do
  curl -s -X PUT http://$IP:$PORT/characteristics --data "{\"characteristics\":[{\"aid\":$aid,\"iid\":$TARGET_POSITION_iid,\"value\":$TARGET_POSITION}]}" --header "Content-Type:Application/json" --header "authorization: $KEY"
  echo "Calling curl to target position: "$TARGET_POSITION
  sleep $RUN_EVERY_SECONDS
  CURRENT_POSITION=`curl -s -X GET http://$IP:$PORT/characteristics?id=$aid.$CURRENT_POSITION_iid | jq '..|.value?|select(. != null)'`
  echo "Current position: "$CURRENT_POSITION
done

exit 0

Side notes:

you need to run the HB in insecure mode
in my case setting the -I option in the HB UI settings didn't seems to be enough. I set the environment variable (in the UI) to "* homebridge -D"

Huge thanks to @renssies and his effort with this plugin! 💯💯💯

I've put the scripts and manual to the github and this issue can be closed. Once again, thank you @renssies for great work! https://github.com/bpelech/homebridge-am43-blinds-script-control

renssies / homebridge-am43-blinds

Overcomming 5 min motor autoshutdown #11