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PowerView smart home integration, free and open source

PowerView integration for Gladys Assistant

Hunter Douglas / Luxaflex PowerView motorized shades, locally: position, slats, scenes.

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Control your Hunter Douglas / Luxaflex PowerView motorized shades from Gladys, locally, through your PowerView hub: open, close, stop, set a position, tilt the slats, follow the batteries and run the scenes saved in the PowerView app. No cloud account, no internet connection: Gladys talks to the hub on your home network, like the PowerView app does.

Developed without the hardware: feedback welcome. The integration was written from the published PowerView API and the real hub answers used by the Home Assistant integration's tests, without a hub at hand. If something does not behave as described, please open an issue on GitHub with your hub generation and shade model.

This integration is not affiliated with, nor endorsed by, Hunter Douglas or Luxaflex. PowerView is a trademark of Hunter Douglas.

What you need​

  • A PowerView hub: the Generation 2 hub (round, called "PowerView Hub"), or a Generation 3 gateway (PowerView Gen 3, "Pro" or "Gateway"). The older Generation 1 hub works too, without the stop command.
  • Shades already paired with the hub in the PowerView app. Rooms and scenes are created in the app too: Gladys reads them.
  • Gladys 5.1 or later, on the same network as the hub. The hub needs no password: its local API is open to the home network.

Configuration​

  1. Install the integration from Integrations → Install from GitHub, or from the store.
  2. Open its Configuration tab. The hubs on the same network as Gladys are found automatically (mDNS). If yours is missing, enter its IP address in Hub IP addresses (several addresses separated by commas). For a Generation 3 home with several gateways, the primary gateway is enough: the others only relay the radio.
  3. Pick the language of the feature names (French by default): Gladys keeps a name once the device is added.
  4. Leave the refresh interval at 60 seconds unless you have a reason: it is how often the positions are read from the hub (30 to 600 seconds).
  5. Open the Discover tab: every shade and every PowerView scene is listed. Add the ones you want.

Give the hub a fixed IP address in your router: if its address changes, the integration looks for it again through mDNS, but a fixed address is the surest way.

What each device offers​

Shades​

Each shade is one device, in the Shutter category (or Curtain for the shades that move sideways: Skyline panels, curtains, vertical slats):

  • Open / close: the open, stop and close buttons of Gladys. The shade shows open as soon as it is partly open, closed once fully down.
  • Position: 0 % is closed, 100 % is open. For a top-down shade (it lowers from the top), 100 % is still "open": the integration turns the value around for you.

After a command, Gladys shows the target position at once; the integration then asks the shade where it really is once its motor should have stopped (about 40 seconds for a full course).

Slats (tilt)​

Shades with slats or vanes (Silhouette, Pirouette, Twist, Venetian blinds, vertical slats, Palm Beach shutters…) get a second slider, Slat tilt, from 0 to 100 %:

  • slats that turn 90° (Silhouette, Pirouette): 0 % closed, 100 % open;
  • slats that turn 180° (Venetian, Twist, vertical slats, shutters): 50 % is open (horizontal), 0 % and 100 % are closed in either direction.

Some shades only tilt once fully closed (Silhouette, Pirouette): the hub handles it. Tilt-only shades (Palm Beach, Everwood) have no position slider: open and close turn the slats.

Two-rail and dual shades​

  • Top-down / bottom-up shades (Duette TDBU): Bottom rail position (100 % = the bottom rail up) and Top rail position (100 % = the top rail down). One rail never crosses the other: the integration stops it at the other one.
  • Dual shades (Duolite, Vignette Duolite, Silhouette Duolite: a sheer in front and a blackout behind, on one motor): Combined position (0-50 % the blackout, 51-100 % the sheer, open at 100 %), plus Sheer (front) position and Blackout (rear) position. The sheer can only open once the blackout is fully up.

Battery​

The shades on batteries (or rechargeable wands) get Battery (%) and Low battery (yes at 20 % or less, handy to trigger a reminder). A Generation 2 hub reports the voltage of the pack, a Generation 3 gateway a level in four steps (100, 50, 20 and 0 %). Mains-powered shades have no battery feature.

PowerView scenes​

Each scene of the PowerView app is a device named "scene (PowerView scene)", with a Run the scene button. Add the ones you use: they can be put on a dashboard, and used in Gladys scenes.

Actions​

In the Configuration tab:

  • Search for hubs: looks for the hubs again (after adding a shade or a scene in the PowerView app, for example) and says what each one has: generation, address, number of shades and scenes. A secondary Generation 3 gateway, an address that does not answer, an address typed wrong are reported too.
  • Identify a shade: pick a shade, it moves up and down a little so you can tell which window it is.

Scenes​

The integration adds the Run a PowerView scene action to the scene editor (category Integrations). Pick the scene among your devices (the ones named "(PowerView scene)"); the action returns Shades moved, the number of shades the hub moves, for the following actions.

The shades themselves are ordinary Gladys devices: the Set device value action opens, closes or sets a position, and the Device state change trigger reacts to a position or a low battery.

Examples:

  • Wake up gently: at 7:30 on weekdays, set the bedroom shade to 30 %, then to 100 % fifteen minutes later.
  • Summer afternoon: when the outdoor temperature goes above 28 °C, run the "Close South" PowerView scene; open the shades again at sunset.
  • Battery reminder: when Low battery of a shade turns to yes, send yourself a message to charge it.

Dashboard​

No dedicated widget: the shades and the scenes are devices, and the Gladys Devices box shows them with their buttons and sliders.

Refresh and hub load​

  • Every refresh interval (60 seconds by default), the integration reads the shade list of each hub that has a shade added to Gladys. The hub answers from its memory: the shades are not woken up, their batteries are spared.
  • Mains-powered shades are also asked their real position over the radio, every 10 minutes, one shade at a time (like Home Assistant). Battery shades are never asked on a timer: it would drain them in days. A battery shade moved with a remote therefore shows its new position only once the hub learns it (a Generation 3 gateway usually hears its shades, a Generation 2 hub often does not).
  • After a command, the shade is asked once its motor has stopped.
  • Radio operations (moves, stops, scenes) are sent one at a time per hub: the hubs are known to crash when they get several at once.

The PowerView API has no published quota; these paces are the ones Home Assistant has used for years.

Troubleshooting​

  • No hub found: check that Gladys and the hub are on the same network (same subnet), then enter the hub IP address in the configuration and run Search for hubs. Some routers filter mDNS between Wi-Fi and wired networks.
  • The status says the hub does not answer: a Generation 2 hub reboots every night for a few minutes; the integration waits for it silently. If it lasts, unplug and replug the hub.
  • A position does not follow the remote: see "Refresh and hub load" above. Opening the shade from Gladys once resyncs it.
  • A new shade or scene is missing: run Search for hubs, then open the Discover tab.
  • More detail: the integration logs only its lifecycle (start, hubs found, lost and back, one line per command). Set LOG_LEVEL=debug on the container for the full detail.

Limits​

  • Developed without the hardware: the hub answers come from the Home Assistant tests. Feedback welcome.
  • The embedded light of the Aura illuminated shades is not driven.
  • The PowerView schedules (automations) stay in the PowerView app.
  • Gladys has no "tilt" feature: the slats are a second position slider, and voice assistants only see the main position.
  • The Generation 1 hub cannot stop a shade.
  • Generation 3 gateways announce themselves as _PowerView-G3._tcp, while Gladys can only look for _powerview-g3._tcp (lowercase): they may not be found automatically. Enter the gateway IP address then.
  • Gladys keeps the names and the features of a device once added: a shade re-paired in the PowerView app gets a new id, hence a new device.

Configuration settings​

These are the settings PowerView asks for in its configuration screen in Gladys.

SettingTypeRequiredDescription
Finding your hubsectionNoPowerView hubs (Generation 2) and gateways (Generation 3) on the same network as Gladys are found automatically: open the Discover tab. If yours is missing, enter its IP address below (shown in your router, or in the PowerView app).
Hub IP addressesstringNoOptional, separated by commas. Only needed for the hubs automatic discovery does not find. For a Generation 3 home with several gateways, the primary gateway is enough.
Refresh interval (seconds)numberNoHow often the shade positions are read from the hub, 30 to 600 seconds. The hub answers from its memory without waking the shades: their batteries are spared.
Language of the feature namesselectNoUsed for the names of the devices added from now on (Gladys keeps a name once the device is added).

How to install PowerView in Gladys​

  1. In Gladys, open Integrations: PowerView appears in the catalog, next to the native integrations, with a community badge.
  2. Click Install. Gladys pulls the Docker image (ghcr.io/guim31/gladys-powerview:1.0.1), starts it in a sandbox isolated from the core, and generates the integration's interface (devices, discovery and configuration).
  3. Open the Configuration screen of the integration, fill in the settings, and save.
  4. You can also install it directly from its repository URL: https://github.com/guim31/gladys-powerview.

PowerView 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​

PowerView 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.

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