Aqara Have now officially released their new roller blind controller and today we’ll be looking at what’s in the box, how they’re fitted and how to set them up in both the Mi Home and Home apps. I’d like to thank Aqara for letting me get to test this product in advance, although the blinds were not provided for free.Aqara offers a choice of three curtain fabrics and colours, along with a fully shaded roller blind, a semi-shading roller blind, and a Shangri-La dimmable roller blind.

Depending on the different colours and different materials, the price ranges from  In this particular case, the location for the installation is in the office, with the Shangri-La blind being used. This type of blind has an adjustable light transmission function, so for the office environment, it’s a good choice. No loss of privacy, but also a good shading effect.The maximum supported width of the roller blind is 2.2m. With full shading, the semi-shielding fabric supports a maximum height of 4m, whilst the Shangri-La curtains support a maximum height of 3.5m. The Product, if you were to buy it in China, from an approved reseller or installer, includes the finished roller blinds, control boxes, plugs, instructions, and fixed parts that have been pre-installed.

This is important to note, as the roller blind motor that is listed on some international sites may not include some of the parts necessary to make the blinds fit. Indeed, the motor is only 60cm wide, so there are additional parts that are no doubt required in order for the device to actually cover windows wider than this. To control and connect to the blinds, you need the Aqara gateway which connects via ZigBee These cannot work with the Mijia gateways or the current generation of gateway cameras.

The top roller blind fabric of the control box has an RJ11 connector that connects to the roller blind body. The front side of the control box consists of three buttons for setting the height limit of the roller blind when they’re initially set up. There’s a blue LED on the top of the button. A pairing button is hidden at the bottom of the control box to either reset or begin initial pairing of the box.In our example, the installation process was completed by an Aqara installer, and the video below briefly records part of the installation of one of the roller blinds by the staff.