Somfy motorized shades

[Gui0312]

Does K work with Somfy shades? Or is it only Lutron? Wife is having some curtains done and I needed blackouts so the vendor told me they work with Somfy (according to him they are too notch) and they have another cheaper version , no Lutron. i understood when playing a movie with K the shades automate to go down etc, I only see Lutron mentioned in the app settings on K.

Does it matter if you have a system
Like Control4/Savant etc,?

Thanks!

 

[MikeKobb]

We directly integrate with certain Lutron product lines. If you want to use other shading, it's absolutely possible assuming that you have a control system like Control4, Savant, Crestron, etc. and that control system has drivers for both Kaleidescape and your chosen shading solution.

Your control system programmer can program that integration, and if you have control of your lighting through the control system, they can (and should!) also add lighting integration so that it will do things like fade the lights down when the movie starts and bring them back up slowly when the movie reaches the end credits. That still blows people away whenever they come to my theater for the first time!

 

[CPickler]

I have Control4 and use the integration to control my Rollease Acmeda (Budget Blinds) shades. From my experience and research Somfy makes a great product and I know Control4 plays nice with them. I wish Budget Blinds told me they had Somfy, but I didn't find out until months after my blinds were installed.

As Mike said, the wow factor of the automation when you start, pause, and end a movie absolutely floors people.

 

[Oldred]

Does K work with Somfy shades? Or is it only Lutron? Wife is having some curtains done and I needed blackouts so the vendor told me they work with Somfy (according to him they are too notch) and they have another cheaper version , no Lutron. i understood when playing a movie with K the shades automate to go down etc, I only see Lutron mentioned in the app settings on K.

Does it matter if you have a system
Like Control4/Savant etc,?

Thanks!

I would think that it's best to think about the Kaleidescape and the Somfy phsycial blinds as two things that can be controlled. So your installer is proposing Control 4 to control them both by the sounds of it. There are numerous other control systems each with different depth and configurability and costs to go with them. Which you use is best driven by exactly what you want to do with it, today and in the future. Also how much do you want to spend on that 'control'.

Somfy themselves have an impressive control system (several strangely). The one I have used the most is called Tahoma and it is itself integrated with things like Alexa etc.. Crestron and Lutron are bigger budget all encompassing solutions, both of which will work. We actually have Crestron here controlling the over arching systems, Lutron doing the lights, Somfy doing the blinds and Velux and most of the commands can be controlled by remote, tablet or Alexa etc etc. but it's integration of pretty much everything we have because I am a gadget geek.

So it's difficult to answer your question without misleading you I suspect, because the answer probably depends on your wider future requirement, which defines best product choices. Hopefully your installer can talk you through that. There is always a really cheap and very expensive way to do this. The former tends to be flaky requiring attention to keep it afloat, the latter expensive.

Sorry if this isn't really helping.