Motorized Curtains, Shades and Sun Blinds

Ever since moving in I've wanted to motorize all of the window coverings in the house. Somfy has always been my preference (mostly due to the fact that the company I work for makes a gateway to Somfy SDN), but their motors are quite expensive. Over the years I've been able to pick up motors for the roller shades off of eBay and Craigslist, and the Sunsetter patio shade is RTS, but Somfy's offering for curtain motorization was way out of my price range.

After doing a fair bit of poking around online, I decided to take a chance on a Zemismart motorized curtain kit. I nearly had a stroke trying to make sense of the instructions, but the general consensus on the internet was that the build quality was decent and the price ($400 CAD) was right.

The motor advertised that it came with two remotes, and it was also compatible with Broadlink, which I'd never heard of. My original plan was to crack open one of the remotes and solder wires on to the keys so that I could tie it into the rest of the automation system. Photos of the motor I could find online revealed that it had a 6P6C RJ11 "Lan" port on the bottom, but nothing I was able to find gave any clue as to what the "Lan" port was for or what the pin-out was.

Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised when the kit showed up and the manual included a pin-out for the port:

I still giggle every time I read "Public" and "Reserve" cable, but the diagram makes it nice and easy to figure out the weird translations.

I decided to pull two runs of CAT6 and punch them down with standard RJ45 keystone jacks. Back in the server room (i.e. laundry closet), the far end of the CAT6 cable goes into a break-out board with a pair of relays (one for open, one for close), which are in turn connected to binary outputs from an automation controller.