Integrating Your Motorized Blinds For

The first component, perhaps most obviously, is a quality motorized window covering product. Aura offers motorized blinds and shades that incorporate Z-wave technology for maximum interoperability with a wide variety of Smarthome control units. Z-wave is supperior to other protocols such as Zigbee which operate on the same frequency as many home and business WiFi networks (2.4GHz) creating a higher risk of signal interference. While Zigbee promises a range of 10 to 20 meters, the latest Z-Wave products boast a range of up to 100 meters.
Another major advanage of Z-Wave is the broad adoption of this communication protocol across so many manufacturers. The Z-Wave Alliance now boasts over 700 members, with 2,400 certified products. There are a staggering 94 million devices in the market with Z-Wave inside; that covers 70% of the smart home market.

As the name implies, the Smarthub is the brains of the whole operation. The Smarthub is where user commands get converted into machine-level instructions for controlling Smarthome devices. User commands can be given to the Smarthub either through a smartphone app over the internet, or by means of a voice assistant device such as Amazon Echo or Google Home, upon which the Smarthub interprets these commands and communicates the appropriate action to your motorized blinds. Here are some of the leading products in the Smarthub space:

• Nexia
• Wink
• Samsung SmartThings
• Any other Z-Wave compatible smarthub

The Voice Control unit is completely optional for any Smarthome. If you prefer to control your blinds through the Smarthub app on your smartphone rather than speaking to Alexa, you absolutely do not need to have the voice control functionality offered by Google Home, Amazon Echo, and others. But if voice control is your thing then integration of your motorized blinds with most standard Smarthome Assistants is a straightforward process.

If you love the idea of telling your blinds what to do, AURA has a huge range of motorized blinds and shades that will work with your Smarthome Assistant of choice.

Google Assistant (formerly called Google Home) – Upon setting up your Google Assistant with a compatible smart hub, all you need to say is, ‘Hey Google, open the blinds’ or ‘Hey Google, close the blinds’ and watch your shades obey your every command. Google Assistant enjoys excellent voice recognition and a broad feature set such as the ability to answer fact-based questions like: "Do I need an umbrella today?" "How long is the drive to [destination]?" and "How do I make hummus?"

Amazon Echo – Just say, ‘Hey Alexa, open the shades upstairs’ watch the Smarthome 'magic' happen. If you use Amazon for shopping, Amazon Echo can access some of your personal information to make ordering products a convenient, seamless process. Some features you may enjoy with Amazon Echo are: Getting updates on your daily activity progress by connecting to your Fitbit; Ordering products from Amazon, or reading Audible audiobooks.