Solar-powered smart blinds automatically adjust

As home automation products flood the market, there’s one aspect of the home that hasn’t gotten too much attention — blinds. Imagine you didn’t have to get up to adjust your blinds anymore because they were smart enough to do it for you automatically.

It’s possible. Tech mom Ksenia Vinogradova was opening and closing her blinds when it occurred to her that there had to be a more convenient way to deal with this aspect of the home.

“It just hit me; there’s got to be a way to automatically control indoor light and temperature without breaking your wallet on expensive and low tech motorized blinds,” said Vinogradova. “Window blinds are there to regulate incoming heat and light, but it is nobody’s job to open and close them several times a day. Such a simple, but annoying task has got to be automated, just like many other things at home.”

That’s when she came up with  FlipFlic, a smart blinds controller that automates ordinary window blinds in seconds and requires no tools to install.

The solar-powered device converts any horizontal or vertical blinds into a self-adjusting, light, time, and temperature-responsive smart window.

While some other companies have been developing smart blind solutions over the past year, Vinogradova boasts that FlipFlic is easier to use than anything else on the market. It can be installed with just one click and can be integrated into other smart home products.

FlipFlic works in conjunction with an app, available for iOS (Android compatibility coming soon). Once connected to the app, users can determine a comfort temperature so that the blinds will adjust if it gets too cold or hot. Blind automation can also be scheduled on a timer and overridden if necessary.

It can also be integrated into any present smart home systems via BLE and ZigBee.

After the quick installation, users can benefit from automatic natural daylight and could potentially use less artificial lighting, air conditioning, and heating.

The creators have launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for production. Currently, you can snag a FlipFlic for an early-bird price of $60 here. Shipping expected by January 2017.

According to Vinogradova , there will be a large demand for this first-of-its-kind product. Months before the product launched on Kickstarter, the team shipped beta units to 100 testers and received feedback that was used to develop the new product generation.