SwitchBot Curtain Smart Electric Motor - Wireless App Automate Timer Control, Add SwitchBot Hub to Make it Compatible with Alexa, Google Home, IFTTT (Rod2.0 Version, Black)

I researched and bought the Switchbot Curtain to open and close the curtain on our front porch sliding door. In the winter, I'd like it to be open in the morning to get some sun and heat into the house but close after sundown to insulate for the cold coming through the aluminum frame. In the summer, it's the exact opposite. It would be a delight to have a home automation product that worked perfectly for this, which after ~ 1 week in early November, the Switchbot Curtain is going well.The curtain we have are heavy, use grommets, and has a telescoping rod about 75" in length. These are each challenges for the automation bot, which required careful setup.1) Heavy curtain - The bot does have enough torque in the wheel-curtain rod to move our blackout curtain. It slows at parts, and makes a bit of a whirring noise, but it's strong enough.2) Grommets - There is significant friction with grommets and they get caught at the telescoping joint. To reduce the friction, you have to use this beaded, clipped twine to connect the grommets to each other. The twine had clips to connect to each grommet each 6 beads, which set a standard distance between the grommets when closed. This was a problem, because I bought a 100" wide curtain, and 6 beads between grommets was not enough. When the bot was in the "fully opened" part of the rod, the curtain only covered ~ 75% of the sliding door. The fix was to change the number of beads between the clips and extend the distance between the grommets. This was an absolute pain in the chickadees to change, but once I tediously set 8 beads in between grommet clips on some, and 7 beads per grommet clip on others, the bot is fully opening the curtain without issue. Too many beads per grommet clip and the grommets will rotate slightly causing additional friction, so care must be done.Additionally, catching the grommets or the bot on the connection of the telescoping curtain rod is a known problem with a provided solution. Swtichbot Curtain comes with an adhesive piece of laminated metal to add to your curtain rod to ask as a less friction ramp between the two rods. It works, but care must be taken to install it correctly. There are three main concerns with the ramp fix for the curtain rod: adhesive UV resistance, ramp color, and reusability. I'm concerned that the adhesive will fail over time with the UV from the sun, and the chrome/stainless steel finish of the ramp does not match the antique bronze of the curtain rod. There are no other colors of ramp that can be purchased. And once the ramp is installed on a specific curtain rod, I cannot then move the Curtainbot to a different curtain round the house, or swap the curtain rod for that sliding door. The bot will not work as intended without the telescoping rod ramp installed.To open my curtains, I can no longer operate them by hand. Think of the Curtainbot not as an additive to the use cases of the curtain, but as a replacement. There are a few options offered by the company - phone app, remote, NFC tag, wall switch, and Alexa with a hub. The only option offered out of the box is a phone app. I wish I could attend all the product management meetings when discussing phone apps - We do not want to add more things onto our phones. We have too many phones in the house, and now way too many separate home automation phone apps. There is a Tough&Go feature which allows you to pull open or closed the curtain slightly and the bot will respond and move the curtain the rest of the way. We've only just started using this feature, and I'm concerned that we'll either affect the calibration (where the bot stops for open and closed) or we'll affect the motor enough that it'll reduce the toque performance.Therefore, we also bought a hub to control the bot via Alexa. After setting it up, it works as intended. The hub is also an IR remote, so this expanded the number of non-smart devices we can operate with Alexa: our box fan, our surround sound, our TV, etc. It's a bit nice, to be honest, though it isn't perfect in all use case. To control the curtain, it does a fine job. To increase the volume on the surround sound, it's not great.Lastly, let's discuss this whirring sound. The app provides a "silent mode" which reduces the noise and the torque. However, on a telescoping rod with grommets with > 6 beads between grommets, you need all the torque that the bot can provide. So silent mode doesn't suit in this use case.As an overall, after 1 week of ownership and about a month's worth of research, I'm happy with how the bot is operating. I'm glad that I didn't need to run romex in an exterior wall cavity for a different product, and that it doesn't need professional install with wholesalers. This was a very good option for me and my house.

I was very curious to try these but skeptical, especially because we wanted to put them in our bedroom, and people said even the second generation was kind of noisy. They have worked far better than I could’ve imagined. Really easy to set up.They have been much more useful than I anticipated. I felt a little silly about automating curtains, but it really has made a big difference. Our bedroom curtains are not that accessible and now it is no bother to get them open first thing every morning and closed at night. It was easy to set up with Alexa. We have a time schedule and also frequently use the voice command. Works flawlessly in both cases.Yes, they make a bit of a noise while opening and closing, but we close our curtains before we go to bed and open them after we’re out of bed so cares if they’re a bit noisy when we’re already awake?This is one of those automation projects that has worked out way better than I had anticipated. The idea of opening and closing curtains by hand now feels tedious!Best of all, now I feel like I can get curtains instead of blinds for our living room. I thought that automating blinds would be easier and more successful but I really prefer the look of curtains. Now that I know these work really well, I am getting them for the whole house.

I recently bought SwitchBot Rod 2 curtain devices for the 4 windows in my family room. I also bought a SwitchBot hub to connect with Alexa. Here is my list of pros and cons...ProsVery well packaged. They give (almost) everything you need to get started. Setup was very easy and (mostly) flawless. But the biggest PRO is, they work! I have round metal tube type curtain rods holding grommet style curtains. Two curtain panels per window on 4 windows. I can say, "Alexa, close curtain 1 (2, 3, or 4)." and it works. I setup a routine in the SwitchBot app to close the curtains at sundown and open the curtains at sunrise. I setup an Alexa routine to “close family room curtains,” and another to “open family room curtains,” to open and close all with one command.ConsVery pricey! Because I have split curtains, I need two SwitchBots per curtain. The SwitchBot struggles a bit on the metal tube curtain rod where one rod piece fits into the other and makes a ridge. The SwitchBot kit comes with an aluminum piece to cover that ridge and make a ramp, but I found that piece didn't work that well. So far, my SwitchBots have only gotten hung up in that ridge a couple of times, so I don't think it's that big of a deal. It looks like they were thinking about this when they designed to Rod 2 because the rollers look like they can handle this with few problems. To be fair with SwitchBot, it wasn’t the SwitchBot Rod 2 that got hung up on that ridge it was the curtain grommet that got stuck. SwitchBot Rod 2 comes with a USB charge cable but doesn’t include a power adapter to USB, but for me this is not an issue since I have plenty of them. I’ve not owned the SwitchBot Rod 2 devices very long so I don’t know how log the batter will last before needing recharged. Setup on most of the SwitchBot devices was simple. I did have a few of them NOT connect on the first try. At setup each device needed a firmware update. Most of the devices took that update on the first try but a few of them struggled a bit and I had to hit the “try again” option a few times to get them to take the update. I found the “automatic calibration” did not really work that well for me, and the “manual calibration” worked better.Overall, I'm very pleased with the SwitchBot Rod 2. I did not have to change out my curtain rods or curtains. The devices are mostly hidden behind the curtains. There is a plastic chain that connects to each grommet in the curtains that keeps the shape of the curtain while they are opening and closing. If you look really close at my curtains you might see that chain, but I don’t think that is a big deal either. I may not have to do this but I think I will run a small tie wrap through the last grommet and the end of the curtain rod just to ensure that curtains do not pull away from the ends.