Automated Blinds on the Cheap with Home Assistant + RM4 Pro + 433mhz Blinds

I had been in search of some automated blinds for my living room and my master bedroom. I looked at the IKEA solution but didn’t want to shell out $160+ for each blind for my 36″ windows. I didn’t know if all this hardware below would work together but I can confirm it does, which is why I am sharing it with you now.

Hardware needed

I found these random ones on Amazon that use a standard 433mhz remote. Now combine the 433mhz blinds with an RM4 Pro to capture the remote commands for each blind and then a template cover in Home Assistant you then get automated blinds! Now, these specific ones I bought do NOT use what is called “rolling” codes. This means that the codes do NOT change when the buttons are pressed on the remotes. Other blinds I tried to use “rolling” codes and did not work for this so any other 433mhz blinds will be your mileage may vary. I also removed the 6x AA battery pack from these and opted for rechargeable 2S packs that I found online as well.

Once you have the blinds installed and the RM4 Pro added to your network and its “lock device” option disabled in the Broadlink app you need to add the RM4 Pro to home assistant and you do NOT need to put any device in the Broadlink app. If you need to set the start and stop points in your blinds go ahead and follow the directions included with the blinds and do that now.

Once the RM4 Pro is on your wifi you can delete the RM4 Pro app as we’re not using anything in there. Home Assistant has full control over the RM4 Pro and you’ll do the capture of the RF signals through Home Assistant, not the Broadlink app. Just provide its IP address to add the RM4 Pro to Home Assistant. I used my Unifi Router to give it a static IP since it doesn’t support that directly.

To capture the RF commands you will use the developer tools to learn the up, stop, and down commands for each blind remote. Make sure to change the device name and remember these names for each blind. In my case, I have “masterbedroomblinds1” and “masterbedroomblinds2” for my 2 blinds.

Programming the code sequence

When you are programming them look at the LED On the RM4 Pro. It will light up orange one time and when this happens keep pressing the button you are programming over and over again until it shuts off.

This 1st step has the RM4 Pro “sweep” the RF channels to see what channel your remote is operating on. Once that LED shuts off IMMEDIATELY STOP PRESSING THE BUTTON and then when it comes back on press the button on the remote that you were programming for 1 second, the light will shut off again indicating it grabbed the code from your remote.

That second LED light-up actually captures the remote code and commits it to memory on Home Assistant for that RM4 Pro in its configuration file. Repeat this process for the stop and down commands. Repeat this step for each blind. You will have up, stop, and down commands programmed for each one.

Once you have all the commands learned we need to make a template cover in home assistant. I have an include for my cover yaml file and that means adding in the below code your configuration.yaml file and creating a cover.yaml file in the home assistant config directory (this is at the same level as configuration.yaml).

cover: !include cover.yaml

Now here is my cover.yaml file content for the 2 blinds I setup:

- platform: template
  covers:
    masterbedroomblinds1:
      device_class: blind
      friendly_name: "Master Bedroom Window 1 Blinds"
      open_cover:
        service: remote.send_command
        data:
          device: masterbedroomblinds1
          command: up
        target:
          device_id: 829f67626c801bcaac1b1b0b49595a9f
      close_cover:
        service: remote.send_command
        data:
          device: masterbedroomblinds1
          command: down
        target:
          device_id: 829f67626c801bcaac1b1b0b49595a9f
      stop_cover:
        service: remote.send_command
        data:
          device: masterbedroomblinds1
          command: stop
        target:
          device_id: 829f67626c801bcaac1b1b0b49595a9f
- platform: template
  covers:
    masterbedroomblinds2:
      device_class: blind
      friendly_name: "Master Bedroom Window 2 Blinds"
      open_cover:
        service: remote.send_command
        data:
          device: masterbedroomblinds2
          command: up
        target:
          device_id: 829f67626c801bcaac1b1b0b49595a9f
      close_cover:
        service: remote.send_command
        data:
          device: masterbedroomblinds2
          command: down
        target:
          device_id: 829f67626c801bcaac1b1b0b49595a9f
      stop_cover:
        service: remote.send_command
        data:
          device: masterbedroomblinds2
          command: stop
        target:
          device_id: 829f67626c801bcaac1b1b0b49595a9f

Once you have the YAML code set and your remote codes learned you will just restart Home Assistant and the new cover entities we set up in the YAML file will show up and you now can control the blinds automatically!

For my master bedroom, I have these close at midnight if they are not closed already and they open automatically at 10:30 AM so that way if I slept in I will be blasted with light to get up.

Rechargeable Batteries

Now, this last step is optional but definitely going to save you money in the long run. These blinds use 6x AA batteries and claim 3-6 months’ life. Being someone that doesn’t like using disposable batteries I found some 2S battery packs with chargers that are usually intended for use with airsoft guns that work perfectly with these blinds. This is what I am using and they don’t require any rewiring of the plug and match up to the stock plug on the blinds battery connections. They also fit into the blinds out of the box!

I hope you enjoyed this write up and the links to Amazon are affiliate links. These products were purchased with my own money.