Gen. 2 Hybrid (FM and Zigbee) Single E-Wand - Motorize and Automate Slatted Blinds - Retrofit. Released June 2021

Let's start with my environment. I use SmartThings and have over 150 devices in my current smart home. Not all of them are tied to SmartThings, some are Google/Nest. I try to get devices that I can put directly in SmartThings and then pass to Google for voice control. I was watching one of the tech channels that I follow on YouTube and saw a wand based blind control that was on a Kickstarter project. I liked what I saw and I've looked at other blind retro-fit options, but 1. they're expensive and 2. none of them work with horizontal blinds that don't have the pull cords. I looked at the Sunsa wand, but it only said Google/Alexa and maybe they would do a ZigBee integration later. So, that got me looking and I stumbled on this e-wand. So, I ordered one to try. These are super easy to install and setup. No custom device handler, they work natively in SmartThings. They allow me to use Google Assistant for voice control. The wand is easy to program, I've played with the settings to get what I like for the open/close settings. These changes are all done right on the wand. After that, I just use voice controls to set how much open by a % that I want for open/close. Then, at the end of the day I just tell Google to close the blinds. I've had no issues with these with SmartThings, and I plan to order more for my other blinds. They're not cheap, but they're not as ridiculous as what they want for custom smart blinds/shades. So, far I'm pleased with my purchase and plan to do some automations to open them and close them automatically during the day. I have temperature sensors and light sensors on other devices, so I should be able to make some custom routines to control these during the day to help with keeping the house cool in the summer.Update: I've since ordered 9 more of these for the rest of my horizontal blinds. I've now got them all setup and in routines that run at different times throughout the day. I have sunrise/sunset routines and some that I have set just by time of day. I've had no issues with any of these wands. I've never used the included remote, I do use the SmartThings app or voice control to adjust the blinds as needed. If there is a time I need to open/close them manually, I can just give the wand a little twist. These are super convenient and I'm really happy with these.Update 2: I have one more window that I need to put some kind of cover on, in a bathroom. I was going to get another of these but the price has jumped about $50 a unit. I have four automated roller shades in my patio area so I'm trying to decide if I want to take the hit on another of these or do another roller shade. The price is almost the same since these took a huge price jump. If you're looking for a SmartThings compatible roller shade, the Yoolax smart shades are great, and you can get them on Amazon too.Update 3: I ordered one more of these to complete all of my window upgrades. As of now, Sept 2022, SmartThings is no longer supporting the IDE/Groovy environment and will shut that environment down 12/31/2022. I'm in the process of moving all of my devices away from the IDE/Groovy and DHT drivers and my V2 hub. I paired this device to my new V3 hub and was surprised to see it show up and a Zigbee Dimmer. I renamed the device and assigned it to the correct room. Everything works as expected. ON opens the blinds to "Full" open, which you program as part of the the e-wand setup. OFF closed the blinds. Any percent of dimming is the value of the amount to open less than "FULL". Now, I just need to go delete the other 10 of these and get them moved over to my new hub. Hopefully, SmartThings will let us change the Icon to a window blind in the future. In the old environment this was setup as a Zigbee Window Shade and had an appropriate icon. It just looks weird as a dimmer switch in the app. I tried changing the Edge driver from a dimmer switch to a window treatment and the device stopped working, so I had to change it back to a dimmer, just FYI before you think I didn't try that.

The E-Wand is fairly easy to install and to use. Its main problem, which I'll describe at the end, is not the unit itself.The device works well with my Hubitat C7 hub. There is a custom driver (now about two years old) available for download from Current E-Wand but Hubitat's built-in Zigbee shade driver can now control the E-Wand natively. I use the custom driver because I couldn't get Hubitat's to close the blinds up rather than down (i.e., to close them by pivoting the forward edges of the blinds upward). Neither driver reads the E-Wand's light or temperature sensors, though, so with or without a hub only the E-Wand can use them. (I assume that Current's API doesn't reveal them.)So what's the problem? The instruction manual. Its fifty pages long. And after you read it you're as likely to be bewildered as enlightened about several things. Current seems to know that there are problems with it -- or has had complaints -- because the box includes a separate page restating the instructions for calibrating the wand. The intent seems to be to clarify what's in the manual. The result is to make things even more confusing. I've calibrated the thing several times and I'm still not sure I have it right. In fact, I'm pretty sure I don't -- that may be why Hubitat's driver has problems -- but it works the way I want it to so I'm going to leave it be.So: a good product, one star off for poor documentation.

When it works it works. It has a lot of torque and can open and close the vertical blinds over my patio doors. Unfortunately this device is hamstrung by a series of poor design decisions.As others have mentioned this thing is a pain to set up. The instructions are vague, the actual steps are unforgiving, and nothing seems intuitive. You don't actually set open and closed positions since most blinds have too much slack to be precise. Instead you have to go through the motions of opening and closing to program, and if you start with any slack at all, your positions will be messed up and you have to start over. The wand also has plenty of torque to over-tighten your blinds so be careful or you can damage them!Just to make the setup more annoying, you have to twist the e-wand in the OPPOSITE DIRECTION of the regular wand so it's very easy to mess up half-way through programming. There's no backing up or fixing a step. You have to start all over again, and can only restart by pulling the batteries.Once you set it up you will find that it doesn't actually behave well as a zigbee device. Even though you program the wand from full open right to full open left, zigbee will only see full-right and closed. The developers goofed by setting the closed position as -90 degrees instead of 0 degrees.Once I was finally able to set it up and try it for a few weeks, it has proven unreliable. It seems to get confused about its own status and stops responding until you open up the device settings and switch the angle back and forth until it starts responding again.Unfortunately the worst is yet to come. The e-wand is only controllable through zigbee as the blind "angle". Trying to "open" and "close" the zigbee blind doesn't do anything, and you can't switch controls so the e-wand will respond to "open" instead of "angle". In all the apps I have tried, actually changing the e-wand angle requires you to go into the zigbee device settings. Between the unreliability and the weird way to actually use it, It's a total pain to automate.This thing just isn't mature enough. They have to improve reliability/recovery and they have got to find a way to let the wand respond to "open" and "close" commands.