Aqara Roller Shade Driver E1 Plus Aqara Smart Hub E1, with Schedule and Voice Control, Rechargeable with Long Battery Life, Compatible with Apple HomeKit, Alexa, Google Assistant, and IFTTT

The media could not be loaded. This blind driver is fantastic! It links to alexa (a few others such as home kit too) which we did, it responds quickly and quietly to the open and closed parameters that we set. It's extremely easy to fit, and comes with numerous different fixtures depending on the size of chain on your blinds. It comes with wall fixings and you can choose either to mount with screws (provided) or with a 3M sticky pad which I did and its very secure. You can use either in conjunction with alexa, home kit etc and command by voice which is great, but be aware you can only have the blind open or closed, no partial opening, unless you control it through the app, in which case you can control by percentages of open or closed. The battery life is amazing, just charge up the unit when you recieve it( took less than 2 hours ) and link it to the app and fix in place. I have been using it about 5 or 6 weeks now and the battery is still 86% full. Ideal for use, if you set a routine on alexa, for when on holiday/ out at work and can be controlled by the app or alexa when away from home ( small hub required for away from home use) the ub we bought was inexpensive and also works as a wifi hotshot in your home I believe it was the E1 hub. The unit uses 2.4ghz wifi, if your router has both 2.4 and 5 ghz, its very simple to seperate the two wavelenths (if i can do it anyone can, i just googled it) I would thoroughly recommend

I was a bit miffed at first that I had to get a hub so I could use this, but im so glad I did. The product works brilliantly, very easy to set up and it opens and closes the blind each day. I hardly ever charge it. Works through the Aqara app and with Google Home routines etc. I use it to help wake me up in the morning by opening my blind with the alarm. I then have it automatically close the blind at sunset. It's got a little motor noise but hardly noticeable. I didn't screw it to the wall, I simply used the sticky pads and it's been up for a number of months.

What a clever gadget this is! I must admit I thought it was a bit of a gimmick until I looked at the price of professional power blinds 😲 Does the job admirably and will work as a stand alone unit or as past of your network.

After a holiday where our room had automatic blinds - I just had to add to my smart home set up.I ordered one as a trial in the bedroom, we have it set up through Home Assistant to shut at a certain time along with change the lighting scene ready for bed. In the morning the blind opens at small increments over 30 minutes to allow natural light to enter our room. We have since installed 2 more to cover our living room (where we had one awkward blind to reach and would rarely shut because of this).I'll start with the bad points - but plenty of good points further down.1. Noisy, it certainly isn't the quietest device. With our set up in the morning to open slowly with lots of small increments it isn't too noticeable but when operating for the whole length of the blind the noise starts to irritate.2. Slow, it is definitely far quicker by hand! However, the appeal of just setting to open/close and then leave to do whatever else means the speed isn't too much of an issue. The blind shuts before we sit down in the evening in the living room and before we go the bed is already closed so means we don't need to worry about waiting to close in the evenings - and opening in the morning is not important that it happens instantly.3. The plastic cover that covers the blind cord gearing keeps coming off. All 3 devices we have are installed in slightly different ways - and all 3 kick the plastic protector off all the time. We wish there was a slightly stronger mechanism to hold in place. It's a slight annoyance.The good points:1. Life is definitely that little bit easier, no longer do we have to spend a minute everyday opening and closing blinds. That is 6 hours every year! Slight joking aside, we have a blind that was very difficult to get to in one of our rooms so we would usually leave open, since installing we have been able to close and open with ease. Timed closing means the house is ready for the evening and sets a relaxed mode in the evening.2. Connects with Zigbee, though I bought the Aqara hub initially, I have since connected directly to Home Assistant through a Zigbee receiver installed on Home Assistant. This means we have full local control over all the blinds along with being able to easily integrate with our Home Assistant automations. We have linked the blinds in with our Hue wall switches (through an automation) so we can open and close the blinds from the light switch (as well as control the lighting).3. Good battery life. We installed our first blind controller 5 weeks ago and used about 50% battery. At first we used it quite a bit to open/close and definitely more than once a day. The blind itself is quite heavy. It doesn't take too long to charge and takes USB C so a readily available cable. I have just a long USB C cable that I can plug in and charge the units in-situ to make life a bit easier rather than having to take off the wall and try to line the blind cord back up again.4. For those who are less mobile this would be a massive benefit, the buttons on the unit themselves are big enough to make good contact, and far enough apart to not accidentally push the wrong button. They have their own mobile app, and with external tools it is possible to link to physical switches, but it would be nice for Aqara to offer their own switch that could talk locally to the blind controllers. We don't need this but others might.

Very easy to connect and setup with either screws or sticky adhesive will be purchasing more in future! Would make sure you are choosing only the smart blinds I accidentally bought the usb hub with it also when I have another hub out for delivery 😅

These work well with HomeKit and seem to last a long time between charges.

Work ok for a few days then started stopping where it wanted leaving the blind half way up. Reset parameters but made no difference. Complete waste of money.