Curtain Contraptions

The first thing we did with the Dawn and Dusk Autoglide Curtain Track was to open up the light sensor and the switch to see how they were wired up. The light sensor is just a light sensitive resistor and the switch was a simple momentary switch. (Too simple really. It’s quite naff really but I suppose we’ve been spoilt by the better looking blind motor switches.)

Since our cheap Maplin crimp tool wasn’t really doing a great job, we decided to sacrifice the dawn and dusk sensor. Snip! Ideally, it would be nice to work out a sensor/resistor-like control since you should then be able to force the blinds open or closed. However, that will wait, for now we wired it up like the switch to an X10 universal module.

So it worked with the bare motor. For a proper test we decided to put the track up in the dining room - that’s still full of boxes.

It worked and it looks pretty good too. I’d be nice to have more control than just momentary open/close/stop but it’ll do for now.