The Z-Wave Alliance, an open consortium of leading global companies deploying Z-Wave, was proud to announce iBlinds as the October 2015 winner of its global IoT developer competition.
The Problem
If you live in a house, or even a multi-room apartment, you know how annoying it is trying to control the blinds on every window.
You wake up in a dark room and have to use an artificial light before letting the sun in by opening the blinds in the bedroom. You come home from work to a hot house because the sun was warming it all day. Now, you have to adjust the thermostat to cool it down. You have to close the blinds before turning on your TV or computer. It drives you crazy on vacations away from home, wondering if you left any blinds open. At the same time, by having your blinds closed for several days in a row, you are giving a signal to burglars that the house is unoccupied and offers a “window of opportunity.”
Hi, my name is Eric. As an electrical engineer and software developer, I am very excited about the opportunities offered by the Internet of Things. But also, I’ve been really unsatisfied with the level of fragmentation and complexity in the industry. Almost every new device requires a separate app or a new bridge. Home automation is supposed to make our lives easier. Instead, just to turn on a light, you need to find your smartphone, open an app, wait until it is connected to the bridge, and only after that, turn on the light. The complexity slows down smart home adaption and prevents many of us from using the fruits of the technological progress.
I wanted to have a product which would work right out of the box, “talk” to other appliances, and would be easy to install and manage with just a touch of a button. I visited my local Home Depot and searched online. But all the solutions currently available on the market are either very expensive or too complicated (or both).
So I had to come up with my own device.
Meet iBlinds
The iBlinds kit is made for homeowners and landlords who would like to save time and money on energy bills and to have an automated solution which makes their lives more comfortable and secure. It is designed for the busy lifestyle of contemporary people but will also be hugely appreciated by your elderly parents and people with a limited mobility by protecting them from unnecessary, dangerous “gymnastics.”
iBlinds is an easy to install and manage control kit for your blinds. It will let you automate any two inch horizontal blinds in your house or office: set up a specific time to open and close, adjust them to keep your home warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer, manually control a single blind, or a group of them, from anywhere in the house or in the world, using a free app on your smartphone.
Read more: iBlinds – Make Your Existing Blinds Intelligent