pysmartblinds

Python interface to control BLE-based MySmartBlinds.

This library is not affiliated with nor condoned by MySmartBlinds, and has been written without any knowledge of its internal workings. Be aware that this software is provided as-is, and using it probably voids your MySmartBlinds warranty.

Neither MySmartBlinds nor developers of this library are responsible for any damage or misconfiguration to your blinds or MySmartBlinds system as a result of using this library.

Features

Enables direct control of MySmartBlinds motorized blinds.
Converts the absolute position-based protocol of MySmartBlinds into a relative one, enabling natural up/down/stop control as well as timed transitions.

Caveats

Firmware version

This library has been tested to work with firmware version 2.0. No other versions have been tested, and there is no guarantee that this library will work if you update the firmware beyond 2.0.

Concurrent usage

This library currently uses pygatt, which limits to using one blind at a time. In the future, a pygattlib backend would enable concurrent multi-blind support.

Pairing

This library does not emulate the pairing process. You must use a device supported by MySmartBlinds, a MySmartBlinds account, as well as the official app, to pair, configure, and calibrate your blinds.

Key retrieval

Since the blinds are paired to your MySmartBlinds account, you will need to sniff or scan the BLE traffic in order to recover the MAC address and account pairing key. Once you have this data, you can use this library either to complement or replace the MySmartBlinds app.

External adjustments

The BLE protocol (as of firmware version 2.0) does not include state read-back (it just returns 0xFF). If you use this library in conjunction with the MySmartBlinds app, automations stored on the blinds, or the external tilt wand, any adjustments to blind position made external to this library will not be recognized. The next operation made with the library will reset the blind position to the last recorded state. Keep in mind that uninstalling the MySmartBlinds app does not disable any automations you may have created within the app.

Discovering MAC and keys for blinds

Once you have paired, configured and calibrated your blinds in the MySmartBlinds app, you need to discover the MAC address and key in order to speak with it.

At a high level, you need to snoop the BLE packets being sent to the blinds. The key is a packet sent to GATT handle 0x001b (characteristic UUID 00001409-1212-efde-1600-785feabcd123).

However, it seems that only the first byte in the key is actually needed, so it doesn't take too long to scan for it, and this library provides a means to do so.

search.py in the examples folder wraps this functionality; just run it and see what it returns.

Home Assistant

Check BLE signal between hass server and blinds

Check that your hass server can reach the blinds via BLE:

sudo hcitool lescan | head -200 | grep SmartBlind_DFU | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn
# Give the blinds reliability connection score...
sudo hciconfig hci0 down  # the scan can kill hci0, so bring down and up again
sudo hciconfig hci0 up

this will give you some idea of how well your hass server can communicate with each blind.

HASS / hass.io setup

Run examples/search.py and take note of the blind addresses and their scan keys.

Copy files:

 # HA_HOME is where your configuration.yaml is, /usr/share/hassio/homeassistant for hass.io host
 export HA_HOME=/usr/share/hassio/homeassistant
 cp examples/mysmartblinds.py ${HA_HOME}/custom_components/cover/
 cp pysmartblinds/pysmartblinds.py ${HA_HOME}/deps/lib/python3.6/site-packages/

Create configuration blocks for your blinds in your ${HA_HOME}/configuration.yaml (change as appropriate):

 cover:
   - platform: mysmartblinds
     blinds:
       first_blind:
         friendly_name: Sunroom NxNE
         mac: 'AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF'
         access_token: 'd0'
       another_blind:
         friendly_name: Sunroom NxNW
         mac: 'A1:B1:C1:D1:E1:F1'
         access_token: '12'
       ...

Restart Home Assistant

Troubleshooting

For troubleshooting, it's a good idea tail the hass logs looking for mentions of the cover domain or pygatt (BLE stack) using a command something like this:

tail -F ${HA_HOME}/home-assistant.log | egrep -A10 -e "pygatt.backends.gatttool.gatttool|domain=cover"

deftdawg / pysmartblinds