Hunter Douglas says PowerView Gen 3 makes its shades smarter

Hunter Douglas is our present leading decide on in clever window shades, and the business has just introduced a 3rd era of its PowerView ecosystem that guarantees to make them even much better and much easier to use.

PowerView Gen 3 is a entire overhaul of a intelligent window-masking ecosystem that was released in 2015 and tweaked in 2017. The detailed changes variety from the motors in the shades to the app–and the physical remote control–end customers come across on a day by day foundation, irrespective of whether they are programming scenes or opening the shades in the early morning and closing them at night time.

Hunter Douglas product or service supervisor Scott Stephenson explained to us the company centered on 3 crucial places throughout progress: Simplicity, trustworthiness, and scalability.

Hunter Douglas

Some of the simplification exertion was directed at earning the PowerView application a lot easier for buyers to use, but the technicians putting in the shades in consumers’ houses will see the biggest advantages. Stephenson stated the company centered on taking away a whole lot of actions that essential installer schooling, but the selection to drop the proprietary communications protocol Hunter Douglas experienced been making use of in favor of Bluetooth Very low Energy yields a host of rewards that will accrue to each get-togethers.

Many thanks to Bluetooth LE, Stephenson explained, the homeowner’s smartphone mechanically understands which shades are closest in proximity. And many thanks to two-way communication between the shade and the application, conclusion buyers can management the shades working with very little extra than their smartphone—they can even system the shades to open up and shut on a plan, many thanks to a clock integrated into the shade motor by itself. Go away the PowerView app operating in the background, and the app will periodically join to every single shade and update its clock, so scheduled functions take place in sync with each and every other.

Hunter Douglas

The PowerView-primarily based shade we reviewed in late 2020 was run by a rechargeable battery wand, but switching to Bluetooth LE enabled Hunter Douglas to include a rechargeable battery inside the roller tubes of numerous of its sensible shade styles. The corporation suggests the battery need to final a full yr, and when it requires to be recharged, the property owner have to have only contact a cable to a magnetic call issue and go away it there for a pair of hrs.

Stephenson suggests adopting Bluetooth made Hunter Douglas’ good shades much more trusted, as well. “You can crank up the [Bluetooth] radio energy and stay in FCC recommendations to get much better range—we’re viewing a 4x advancement in vary [compared to the company’s proprietary protocol]. Even firmware updates can be completed over Bluetooth.

Hunter Douglas now features two versions of its PowerView gateway, and you are going to want a person or the other if you want to control your shades though you’re absent from house. Possibly additional importantly, you’ll want a gateway for third-bash integrations—including Alexa and Google Assistant—because people rely on cloud-to-cloud interaction.

The PowerView Gateway connects to your router above Wi-Fi, even though the PowerView Gateway Pro provides the trustworthiness of hardwired network relationship. The Pro product also has twin Bluetooth radios, and it supports power over ethernet (PoE), eradicating the need to have for a independent electric power supply for the gateway.