"I have a 3-section horizontal sliding glass door assembly that needed some type of cover and did not want to go with a regular curtain. I took a chance on the BLE version of the Shade assembly.
My biggest concern with roller shades is providing power to the shades. These have a built in battery-motor assembly that does slide out until installed, so be mindful of that. I used blue painters tape to hold together wile messing with them). Instead of 'reversing' the motor in the app I just took it out on one end and slid it into the other end but that was before I figured out the app would do that instead.
I purchased (3) BLE Roller shade assemblies and mounted them inside the opening. Turned out great.
I don't remember how many times they claim the shades will cycle off one charge but whatever they said was very conservative (looked it up, they say 600 times). The first two shades that were installed (two different orders, yes, I complicated my project) have only been charged once and that was after several months of use and the battery was only down to 35% and I have no idea how much charge they had from the manufacturer). These things last a LONG time on a charge (just charged them the for the first time yesterday). The app indicates the charge of each unit and they include real long USB-C charge cables for each unit. I have a charge block with 4 ports so I got to charge all three at the same time but you don't have to.
I set up the app on my phone to be able to open/close each individually as well as a 'scene' to open/close all three at once. The app takes a little bit of playing with to figure it out as I was too lazy to read the instructions (ie: not their fault it took me a couple tries to get it to do what I wanted). There is a way to program the shades to open/close at a certain time and/or on a certain date but I do not care to have Alexa or Google control/be in my house. That is my choice (you do you). The app is full of features on how to make these things sing and dance.
As an option in the app one could set one or all to stop at a 'favorite' position. We have one setting for the center one set to open up about 12"" above the floor to let our cat look out onto the back patio.
While it is not required, I recommend the BLE HUB (get the one that matches the model of shade you get) they sell as that way you do not have to be in the same room or near the shades for the app to connect.
All in all, I will be buying these for my next house, whenever that day comes.
Things to take into account:
- shade measurements is outside face of mounting brakes to outside face of mounting bracket, not the shade material. So when you measure your opening, keep that in mind if you are inside mounting.
- you do not need a power source near the motors as they have built in batteries.
- casing/cover - we did not buy the valance as we are going to have the opening cased with trim in a way that the rolls/mechanism are hidden behind the casing when in the open position. We are having other trim work done so this was just part of that other work.
- the company will reach out to you to verify the width and length BEFORE they make the shade and ship it to you. great communication with these folks. they asked why I only ordered (2) shades the first time (I wanted to mount the two outside pieces and then measure the middle as the middle is actually a different size than the other two). the middle shade slid in-between the other two perfectly.
- the app is quite interesting. many many settings to play with. it makes it easy to reverse the motor, set the upper (open) limit, set the lower (closed) limit, open the shade partially without changing any set settings, etc.
One last bit of advice, take the curtain rod/weight out before you turn the motor on the first time. That way if the motor needs to be reversed you will not damage it when the rod binds against the mounts. With the rod/weight removed the shade will just spin around itself. I 'caught' mine in time before anything bad happened (I had unwound a couple feed of the sheet before snapping it into the mount)."
