Motionblinds smart home integration, free and open source
Motionblinds blinds, shutters and curtains on the local Motion bridge: position, slats, battery.
Published by guim31
- Devices
- Version 1.0.1
- Requires Gladys >=5.1.0
- ★ 0
Overview
This integration drives Motionblinds blinds, shutters and curtains (Coulisse) and the sister brands sold in Europe on the same platform (Brel Home, Bloc Blinds, Dooya, Acmeda Automate Pulse 2...) from Gladys, locally, through the Motion Wi-Fi bridge (CM-20, CM-32...) or a Motion Wi-Fi motor. No cloud, no account: Gladys talks to the bridge on your network, with the same protocol as the Motion app.
Each blind becomes a Gladys device: open / close / stop, its position, the slat tilt of venetian blinds, the battery of battery motors and the radio signal.
Developed without the hardware: feedback welcome. The integration was written from the protocol as the open-source motionblinds library and Home Assistant use it, and tested against a simulated bridge. If something behaves oddly with your blinds, open an issue on github.com/guim31/gladys-motionblinds/issues.
This integration is not affiliated with Coulisse / Motionblinds.
Requirements
- Gladys Assistant 5.1 or later.
- A Motion Wi-Fi bridge (or Motion Wi-Fi motors), set up in the Motion app, on the same network as Gladys.
- The key of the Motion app (see below).
- Better: a fixed IP address for the bridge (a DHCP reservation in your router).
Configuration
Install the integration from the Gladys store, then open its Configuration tab.
The key of the Motion app
The bridge only obeys a request signed with the key of your Motion account:
- open the Motion app on your phone;
- tap ⋮ (top right), then Settings;
- open the About page ("Motion APP About") and tap it five times quickly;
- a window shows the key: 16 characters with dashes, such as
12ab345c-d67e-8f.
Copy it as it is, dashes included, into Key of the Motion app. It is stored by Gladys as a secret and never written to the integration logs. If your blinds use another brand's app built on the Motion platform, the key usually hides in its About page the same way.
The bridge address
IP address of the Motion bridge: the address your router gave the bridge. For several bridges, or Motion Wi-Fi motors (each one is its own bridge), separate the addresses with commas.
Left empty, Gladys asks the network for Motion bridges on its own (a discovery request on UDP port 32100, emitted by Gladys for the integration). Some bridges only answer the Motion app's multicast group: if nothing is found, type the address.
The other settings
- Refresh interval: how often Gladys reads the state of the blinds (10 to 60 seconds, 30 by default). See "How the state is refreshed".
- Allow controlling garage doors and gates: off by default (see below).
- Language of the device names: names given to the new devices and to their features.
Then run Search for bridges and blinds: it lists the bridges found, their blinds, and checks the key with a status query (nothing moves). Open the Discovery tab and add your blinds.
Devices
One device per blind, named after its type in the Motion app ("Roller blind 0001", "Venetian blind 0002"...): rename it in Gladys. Curtains are in the curtain category, everything else in the shutter category.
Features
| Feature | What it does |
|---|---|
| Open / close | Open, stop, close. Shows open or closed at the ends, stopped in between, the way it moves. |
| Position | 0 % = closed, 100 % = open, like every Gladys shutter. |
| Slat tilt | Venetian, Shangri-La and vertical blinds, double rollers: 100 % = slats open, 0 % = shut. |
| Top rail position | Top-down bottom-up blinds: the top rail (the position is the bottom rail). |
| Battery | Battery motors: the level, computed from the pack voltage. |
| Charging | Battery motors that report it (solar panel, charger). |
| Radio signal | Two-way motors: the radio signal between the motor and the bridge, in dBm. |
What a motor cannot tell is not published: a one-way motor only gets Open / close (it shows the last command sent), a motor that only knows its end limits gets no position. When the slat tilt is set, a new position keeps it, like the Motion app does.
The slat tilt is a second slider, because Gladys has no tilt feature: in HomeKit it appears as a second covering named after it.
Garage doors and gates
A Motion Wi-Fi garage door motor and a blind of type "Roller gate" open the house. By default they are published read-only: their state shows, but neither Gladys nor a scene nor a voice assistant can move them. Turn on Allow controlling garage doors and gates to control them, then accept the update Gladys offers in the Discovery tab. The widget buttons never move them, even then.
Widget
Motion blinds: every Motion blind added to Gladys on one card, sorted by name, with where each one stands, a battery below 20 % and the blinds that no longer answer. Its buttons act on all of them at once:
- Open all and Close all (with a confirmation);
- Stop all.
Garage doors and gates are listed but never moved by these buttons.
Scene trigger
Blind moved outside Gladys: a blind changed position without a command from Gladys: from its remote, the Motion
app, a Motion timer or a sun sensor. Filters: the blind, and the direction (Opened, Closed; empty for both). The
scene gets the direction (opening, closing) and the new position in %.
A change is seen at the next reading (30 s by default). Changes in the 3 minutes after a Gladys command count as Gladys's own.
Scene action
Go to the favorite position: the blind goes to the favorite position stored in its motor (set beforehand with the Motion remote). Open, close, a position and a slat tilt are the usual Gladys "Control a device" actions.
Scene examples
- At sunset, close the bedroom: trigger "Sunset", action "Control a device" → the bedroom blind's Open / close on "Close".
- Summer heat: if the outdoor temperature goes above 28 °C between noon and 5 pm, set the Position of the south blinds to 20 % and their Slat tilt to 30 %.
- Manual override: trigger Blind moved outside Gladys on the living room, direction "Opened" → send a message "Living room blind opened by hand", and let your automatic scenes check that before closing it again.
- Wake-up: at 7:30 on weekdays, Go to the favorite position for the bedroom blind.
- Battery: when a Battery goes below 15 %, send a message.
How the state is refreshed
The bridge pushes every change in multicast, which never reaches the integration's container (Gladys runs it on a private Docker network). So the integration reads the blinds itself:
- every refresh interval (30 s by default), it reads the state the bridge keeps for each blind added to Gladys. This costs the motors nothing: no radio traffic, the bridge answers from its memory, which follows the motors' own reports;
- every 15 minutes, it asks each two-way motor for its state over the radio (Home Assistant does it every 10). A battery motor wakes up briefly for it;
- after a command, it asks the motor every 5 seconds (10 for a Wi-Fi motor) until it stops, 2 minutes at most.
No cloud, no quota: everything stays between Gladys and the bridge, one request at a time, as the bridge expects. Gladys may poll the blinds as well; a blind read less than half an interval before is skipped.
Troubleshooting
- "No Motion bridge found": type the bridge address in the configuration. Check that Gladys and the bridge are on the same network, and that the bridge answers in the Motion app.
- "The Motion bridge refused the key": copy the key again from the Motion app, dashes included (16 characters). A new Motion account changes the key.
- "No Motion bridge answers": the bridge is off, or changed address: give it a fixed address in your router.
- A blind is missing: pair it with the bridge in the Motion app, then run Search for bridges and blinds.
- The position lags behind: a change made with the remote shows at the next reading; lower the refresh interval.
- More details: set
LOG_LEVEL=debugon the integration (logs never show the key).
Limits
- Developed without the hardware: the protocol details come from the open-source motionblinds library and Home Assistant; untested blind types (top-down bottom-up, triangle, double rollers, Wi-Fi garage doors) may need fixes.
- Changes made outside Gladys show at the next reading, not instantly (no multicast in the container).
- The automatic discovery may not find every bridge: the address can always be typed.
- A one-way motor tells nothing: Gladys shows the last command it sent, not what the blind did.
- A top-down bottom-up blind: open / close moves both rails; the two sliders move one rail each.
- The bridge's own Wi-Fi signal and the motors' end-limit settings are not exposed; set them in the Motion app.
Support
Questions and bug reports: github.com/guim31/gladys-motionblinds/issues, or the Gladys community forum. Please give your bridge model, the blind types and the integration logs (they never contain the key).
Configuration settings
These are the settings Motionblinds asks for in its configuration screen in Gladys.
| Setting | Type | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Connecting to the Motion bridge | section | No | Gladys talks to your Motion Wi-Fi bridge on your network, without the cloud. It needs the key of the Motion app: open the app, tap ⋮, Settings, then tap the "About" page five times quickly. The key shows up, 16 characters with dashes. |
| IP address of the Motion bridge | string | No | Shown by your router. Several bridges or Wi-Fi motors: separate them with commas. Left empty, Gladys tries to find the bridge by itself. |
| Key of the Motion app | secret | Yes | 16 characters, dashes included, as the app shows it. |
| Refresh interval | select | No | How often Gladys reads the state the bridge keeps for each blind, to follow the remote, the Motion app and the timers. It costs the motors nothing. |
| Allow controlling garage doors and gates | boolean | No | Off: garage doors and roller gates are shown without their controls, and the widget never moves them. They open the house: turn it on only if you need it. |
| Language of the device names | select | No | Names given to new blinds and their features (Roller blind, Position, Slat tilt...). |
How to install Motionblinds in Gladys
- In Gladys, open Integrations: Motionblinds appears in the catalog, next to the native integrations, with a community badge.
- Click Install. Gladys pulls the Docker image (
ghcr.io/guim31/gladys-motionblinds:1.0.1), starts it in a sandbox isolated from the core, and generates the integration's interface (devices, discovery and configuration). - Open the Configuration screen of the integration, fill in the settings, and save.
- You can also install it directly from its repository URL: https://github.com/guim31/gladys-motionblinds.
Motionblinds requires Gladys >=5.1.0. The catalog inside Gladys refreshes every hour, so a new version becomes available at most one hour after its release.
Not running Gladys yet? It is free and open source: follow the installation guide to get started.
About external integrations
Motionblinds is an external integration: a community integration packaged as a Docker container and published on GitHub, that Gladys installs in one click and runs in a sandbox isolated from its core. It is published and maintained by guim31, not by the Gladys core team.
- Browse all integrations, native and community
- Build and publish your own external integration
- Source code on GitHub — source of this documentation