Experience with Rollease Acmeda blinds/motors?

[jfh]

I am looking at replacing some blinds with some use Rollease Acmeda Automate motors (fabricated by the Shade Store).

 

Can anyone comment on their integration with C4 using the Annex4 driver?  

Are the motors reliable/quiet? How well do the motors work?  (Li-ion battery, not hard wired)

Are you happy the the bridge and how it integrates with C4?

 

I am going to have 3 blinds in one room and 6 in another.  However it looks like the remote supports 15 channels, so I presume I would assign one channel per blind?

 

Any tips/tricks for installation/ integration?

[jfh]

Bumping the thread.

Has anyone got these motors and the Annex4 drivers in their project?

[DawnGordon]

+1 for Lutron

Lutron's motors are *much* quieter, and multiple blinds/shades will move at the same speed.  

[jfh]

11 minutes ago, DawnGordon said:

+1 for Lutron

Lutron's motors are *much* quieter, and multiple blinds/shades will move at the same speed.  

I understand.  I have Lutron blinds in my Theater.  They weren't an option (style/price) for the shades that now have Rollease motors.  

 

[eggzlot]

Any updates here @jfh?

still doing my homework. AVOutlet and ShadeStore have Rollease.  AVOulet also has Somfy.  There are so many options it almost hurts my head!  I need to limit it to 1-2 options to show my wife, get fabric swatches, etc.

[datmanagn]

bump..

[jfh]

I have been pleased with Rollease so far.  I have a total of 11 motors in three rooms and plan to add more.

You have to set up the hub before you set up the Annex4 drivers in C4, but that is straight forward.  

 

I had one problem during setup of the Annex4 drivers that was head scratching.  I had all 11 motors working through the Rollease hub but the drivers only found 10 motors during setup.  I thought this was an Annex4 issue, but it turned out to be a local set up issue.

It took some debugging using a Rollease utility to figure out that two motors had been assigned the same internal address in the hub due to an installer error.  I still don't understand why the hub and phone ap don't have a problem with duplicate addresses because all of the blinds worked fine through the ap, but once I deleted the two blinds and added them back to the hub the Annex4 drivers recognized all 11 motors.

There were a few bugs with the motor driver from Annex4 that showed up on blinds that did not have their limits set correctly.  The support team was incredibly responsive in working with me to develop a solution so that slider controls and the icons in the Shades UI worked as expected when motor position queries don't return a valid value.  

I need to work more with the Rollease engineers (also incredibly responsive) to see why the direct commands to force the hub to set limits to current positions don't work.  I could get around this by factory resetting the blinds not reporting properly and starting over but have not gone that route.  This particular issue can be avoided entirely by physically setting the limits during initial installation.  (The installer said it wasn't necessary because defaults were set at the factory.  That turns out to be true if you are only using the ap to control the blinds).  There is a bit of a learning curve with setting the full open/close positions during installation (mostly because the documentation is hard to find).

There is a v2 of the hardware hub that should be out later this fall that will provide additional control and hopefully the Rollease ap will be updated to show the motor ID.

 

The operation of the shades/blinds/motors themselves have been flawless.  The motors allow for 2 way communication and the C4 driver allows you to set positions from 0 to 100 for each motor, open or close commands by motor or open/close commands to all motors on a hub.  

For the motors that don't return actual position status (because of the set up issue) you lose some programming flexibility in C4 but this hasn't been as much of an issue as I thought because I no longer use the remotes or Rollease ap to control the blinds so I can rely on C4 programming knowing where shades should be (or simply setting them to known fixed positions for a given event).   It's nice to have the ability to program off current position if not open ir closed for the motors that report that status properly, but I don't really need it which is why I haven't gone through the hassle of setting up the motors again.

There is direct Alexa support for the Rollease ap, but I use Alexa Routines and the Epic Systems driver to allow for much more natural voice control.

The motors aren't as quiet as Lutron.  They are about the same noise level as the motors in the Hunter Douglas shades they replaced though the pitch is different.  It would be nicer if they were a bit quieter, but these were significantly less expensive than Lutron.

I have their Paradigm 15 channel remotes in each room as a backup.  Very sleek but not too small and terrific surface mount wall mounted magnetic holders.

 

I mentioned it before, but want to say that both Rollease and Annex4 were very helpful and responsive in making sure my motors worked as expected.

 

 

[jfh]

One other thing - Lafayette Interiors is the fabrication (wholesale) factory that does these for many of the dealers.  Most of the dealers I talked to used the same names for the products as Lafayette does (though Lafayette doesn't reference Rollease Acmeda by name).  Just have them conform that the motors are Rollease Acmeda and you'll be fine.  See lafvb.com for more info.

 

We went with the Allure Transitional Shades in the Living Room (including an oversized patio door that others couldn't motorized because of the height)  and the dual shade Couplitaire in the master (Solar shade in back, Transitional in front).  

 

[AK1]

A client of mine was an early adopter of the Rollease shades Control4 integration and needed a lot of assistance from Rollease and the driver developer, noew Annex4. After some weeks he got the kinks worked out and it is functioning reliably for him. He does like the 2 way communication offered by the driver.

 

 

[SurfNTech]

I have been looking at some new shades for one of the houses.  You overall experience sounds positive, how is the response of the shades?  What if you move them from the remote does Control4 know the position still?

[LollerAgent]

Maybe a stupid question - but what shades are you using with the Rollease motors?

[jfh]

2 hours ago, SurfNTech said:

I have been looking at some new shades for one of the houses.  You overall experience sounds positive, how is the response of the shades?  What if you move them from the remote does Control4 know the position still?

 

Yes.  

Assuming that the limit positions are set properly during installation,  C4 will get notified of the position change (via the hub). There is a slight delay in getting the final position notification after the shade has stopped but I presume that's the inherent delay in sending the  signal from the motor to the hub.  

If the limit positions aren't set correctly, the driver is smart enough to recognize fully open or fully closed, but won't know any position between 0 and 100.

 

Controlling individual shades - very responsive.  Shade moves as soon as you finish the action in C4.  If you are using a slider control, shade does not start moving until you have the slider at its final position.

Controlling multiple shades - they start in quick sequence and are not synchronized.  In most cases you can't tell they don't start exactly at the same time (but you can hear it)

They start almost as fast as Lutron, faster than Hunter Douglas if that helps.

[jfh]

2 hours ago, LollerAgent said:

Maybe a stupid question - but what shades are you using with the Rollease motors?

I am using shades manufactured by Lafayette Interiors who are the fabricators for many Mom/Pop shops and small chains.  The specific shades I'm using are Allure and Coupliataire (those are the Lafayette names; your store may rebrand them).  In the Couplitaire (which has two motors), I have a Solar shade to the outside and an Allure to the inside of the room.

I had also looked at The Shade Store, which offered some unique style and fabric options.  They are incredible with fabric selection- take samples of anything home the same day. TSS does their own fabrication using Rollease motors.  Their automation hub is the Rollease hub with a sticker on the bottom.

I went with a local dealer because some of the Lafayette products/styles/colors were pretty much a perfect match for what we wanted.  It also helped that cost (especially cost of installation) was noticeably less expensive than TSS.  

 

For rough idea of cost, I had 11 motorized shades (large oversized windows and a very tall sliding glass door), the hub, a signal repeater, 3 15 channel wall mounted remotes and old shades removed/new ones mounted for a little under $8k.  (Lutron quote was over $20k, other options were $12-$15k).  

[jfh]

I should note I used to be a big Hunter Douglas fan.   I don't miss them at all.  

Yes, they have more style options than most, but there automation support is almost an afterthought (and not that much improved in the current generation) and the construction quality seems to have gone downhill.   From a C4 integration standpoint, I think I would pick almost anything other than HD at this point.  

[DawnGordon]

A former Control4 employee is now head of the Hunter Douglas PowerView team so I expect a not of things to change for the better. I still love Lutron though.  :-)

 

[k3nnis]

Hi guys,

Thinking to get the acmeda motors. Are these retrofittable to existing blinds/shades with no motor? Basically remove the chain and slide the motor in? And keeping existing brackets on the wall?

Thanks.

K.

[Skwerl]

FYI, I bought a bunch of Rollease Acmeda motorized blinds from SelectBlinds a couple years ago. A few of the batteries have stopped holding a charge for more than a couple operations. I've been talking to both Rollease and SelectBlinds and neither one of them will do anything about it.

• Rollease offers a five-year warranty, but their warranties only apply to the manufacturer (SelectBlinds, in this case).
• SelectBlinds' customer support said that they don't stock the motors anymore (can't just get me the battery pack) and I'd have to order entirely new blinds- not just motors. Very helpful!
• The battery pack appears to be a somewhat off-the-shelf part from WorldPower, but I have not been able to find it for sale anywhere after doing searches on the part number or exhaustively searching for replacement parts for my motor model.
• The original Automate Pulse hub was very unreliable. The Automate Pulse 2 hub is far better, but it will still occasionally not open/close blinds that are in the same room only a few feet away.

For these reasons, I suggest you be careful when ordering your blinds. As much work as it could be to source motors and automate them yourself, you might be better off in the long run if you evaluate your ability to source parts- especially batteries if you are not hard-wired into power.  I certainly regret my Rollease purchase.

[RAV]

5 minutes ago, Skwerl said:

FYI, I bought a bunch of Rollease Acmeda motorized blinds from SelectBlinds a couple years ago. A few of the batteries have stopped holding a charge for more than a couple operations. I've been talking to both Rollease and SelectBlinds and neither one of them will do anything about it.

• Rollease offers a five-year warranty, but their warranties only apply to the manufacturer (SelectBlinds, in this case).
• SelectBlinds' customer support said that they don't stock the motors anymore (can't just get me the battery pack) and I'd have to order entirely new blinds- not just motors. Very helpful!
• The battery pack appears to be a somewhat off-the-shelf part from WorldPower, but I have not been able to find it for sale anywhere after doing searches on the part number or exhaustively searching for replacement parts for my motor model.
• The original Automate Pulse hub was very unreliable. The Automate Pulse 2 hub is far better, but it will still occasionally not open/close blinds that are in the same room only a few feet away.

For these reasons, I suggest you be careful when ordering your blinds. As much work as it could be to source motors and automate them yourself, you might be better off in the long run if you evaluate your ability to source parts- especially batteries if you are not hard-wired into power.  I certainly regret my Rollease purchase.

That's BS.

Wonder if one of the online battery pack rebuilders can assist.

[jfh]

2 hours ago, Skwerl said:

FYI, I bought a bunch of Rollease Acmeda motorized blinds from SelectBlinds a couple years ago.

 

…
 

I certainly regret my Rollease purchase.

That sounds like a SelectBlinds issue, not a Rollease one. Don’t know why you would mention the original hub - that is now quite old.  I doubt you can even buy one any more.  The current v2 hub and app work well (just make sure you have firmware > July 2023.

 

I find them to be very reliable with Control4.  As for retrofitting, yes you can.  I had two Hunter Douglas shade motors replaced with Rollease motors.

[Skwerl]

3 hours ago, RAV said:

That's BS.

Wonder if one of the online battery pack rebuilders can assist.

Those services all seem to mention specific battery packs that they service, and here in Hawaii it's difficult to get Li-Ion batteries shipped in either direction.   Luckily, eBay sellers will be more than happy to send their 18650s unmarked.  I'm basically stuck with ordering the cells and refurbishing the pack myself, which is not the end of the world.  It's just not the best idea and the packs are a very snug fit the way it is even when coming from the factory.

[Skwerl]

1 hour ago, jfh said:

That sounds like a SelectBlinds issue, not a Rollease one. Don’t know why you would mention the original hub - that is now quite old.  I doubt you can even buy one any more.  The current v2 hub and app work well (just make sure you have firmware > July 2023.

 

I find them to be very reliable with Control4.  As for retrofitting, yes you can.  I had two Hunter Douglas shade motors replaced with Rollease motors.

No, it's mostly a SelectBlinds issue.  Mostly.  I don't like that I cannot go directly to the manufacturer of the motor to file a warranty claim if the vendor won't take care of it.  After all, it's a Rollease part.

I mention the old hub because it was not well done and it was never fixed and I feel that says something about Rollease Acmeda or at least how they were.  The new hub is a big step forward, but it's still not particularly reliable for me.  If it is for you, that's wonderful.  This just hasn't worked well or been a good experience for me.  I want people to know some of the things they may (or may not) run into if they purchase Rollease Acmeda systems.

[DawnGordon]

It's probably a Rollease issue. I'm working to replace 34 of these shades with Lutron shades for a client, because their batteries are dying prematurely.

[Skwerl]

  I just wanted to hop on real quick to update you on my situation.  It took a few weeks of back and forth with Rollease, but eventually they honored the warranty directly with me since SelectBlinds was being a pain.  I know they don't want to have to deal with end users, but they stood behind their product and shipped me replacements.  Big kudos to Rollease Acmeda!