Hi,
Does anyone know what motors/equipment are Jon is using to control the Shades in the conservatory?
I’ve seen there is AXIS (Coming soon) and MOVEZ (Coming soon) but wanted to know which ones he used and I couldn’t see a post / reference to it elsewhere.
Also, what are you solutions for simple Beaded cord shades to make them go up or down… 
There are lots of interesting hardware adaptations on Thingiverse for 3D printed components to do this.
meant to post some links for this -
For Cheapo blinds -
For beaded cor shades -
This but modified to use a stepper or DC motor?
Possible to use these?
A few years ago I started recording an episode about the blinds while they were being installed in our kids bedrooms, but it was right about the time that my friend Darren (who was installing the motors etc) left the company he was running and started a new business. During the filming we’d used the old company name while explaining the motors so I planned to go back and re-record it all without reference to that company. Of course, I never got around to doing it!
My plan is to do an episode about the blinds at some point but I have several other eps I’m working on first.
The motors in my blinds are 240Vac tubular motors that slide into the blind tube. The blind tube is an aluminium extrusion with ridges down the inside, and the motor has a drive disk on the end of a gearbox that engages with the ridges and rotates the tube relative to the mounting bracket on the end.
The result is that the motors have an enormous amount of torque, unlike the piddly little battery powered motors you often find in retrofitted motorised blinds. The power to the motors is supplied over a 4-core mains cable (2 actives, neutral, and earth) with one active driving the motor up and the other driving it down. There’s a built-in travel limit mechanism to stop the motor at both ends of travel.
Both the motors and the blinds that I’m using were supplied and installed by Darren from Global Blinds (his new company name) so if you’re in Australia it could be best to contact him directly: http://www.globalblinds.com.au