I’ve had a few people ask me to clarify where the servo actually goes. And as I stated before I planned to do a full, start to finish video tutorial. I still will, but I lied on the timeline. It’s summer, I’m a home owner with many things to do, and I’m a beer drinker with many women to slur at. This blog will be more lively in the winter.
Anyway this blog post with be a live document where I will continue to add more how-to details on the blinds project. I’ve decided to start a new post because my original one was getting very long.
Tutorial #1 – Where does the servo go?
Taken from a photo that a viewer sent me, I’ve updated it with the latest in computer graphics to demonstrate that in my case I had to remove the manual crank, shorten the rod (mine was plastic) and hot glue the servo into one of the spools.
My question/advice was to see if you can turn the rod, by hand, with the manual crank still in place. Is there resistance? If so that means the crank needs to be removed. It’s pretty easy; in my case it’s just held in by clips. Looks the same in this guy’s case too.
One issue with this guy’s set up is where the green arrow is pointing, you can see that the rod is what rests on the brackets/holders. But in my set up, the spool (metal drum.. plastic in my case) has a lip on each end and this is what rests on the holders. So, this guy will have to be innovative to get this to work and I look forward to seeing photos of how it’s accomplished.
p.s. I’ve been super negligent in my task of offering a tutorial of this. I just haven’t built anymore yet.
Yup I removed and the rod spins freely. But as I mentioned my rod is square so how would I glue it where the silver thing is. If I remove that it is just hollow with just the rod. See how I pushed the servo in the manual crank. I did that because the space that is left I can just fill with hot glue and it will make them touch, but since the rod is square, it makes this project a lot harder, or maybe impossible with a square rod.
I dont think that the rod being square matters at all. Mine was a hexagon. Remove the manual crank box. Slide the rod back, so that it is only half way through the silver spool. Stick the servo into the square hole in the silver spool. Bond the servo spline to the square hole with hot glue.
My real concern is the last paragraph in my post.
If you glue the servo into the hole of the square rod, then you are killing automatically the manual override of the blind control. On top of this you have melted the servo with the tilt mechanism so if the servo fails you have to order a new servo and a new tilt mechanism.
I would not consider this a solution. I am still looking for a servo with an adapter to attach to a square rod with no success so far.
Kind of but not really. I removed the manual crank box in the first place so that is what kills the manual override. You can still control the blinds manually by just pulling on one of the slat strings. Servos gearing is pretty weak so it doesn’t prevent this. If you really wanted to you could rig up a proper manual control with a draw string.
You may not consider this a solution but you also haven’t done it. I think you’re making a bigger deal out of this than what it is. Using hot glue was an excellent and quick/easy solution. The servo isn’t melted so I dont know what you’re trying to say here. It’s hot glue, it’s not like it’s krazy glue. Hot glue is pretty weak, you can just remove the servo from the blinds with basically zero effort. Hot glue works very effectively for this application. I wouldn’t consider doing anything other than that if I were to do the project again.
It sounds to me like you’d be happier to buy a window blind automation retrofit kit. I prefer DIY because it’s effective and a lot less expensive. And it’s fun.
Lastly, for the millionth time to you an others, I do not attach the servo spline to the rod at all. I attach it to one of the three spools.