My wife and the children were perplexed by my excitement as I gathered them by the window to unveil a new and mysterious device. With all eyes on the curtains, I touched a command on the phone. The room was full of hopes. After an agonizing delay of 10 seconds, the left curtain opened abruptly. A few seconds later, the right curtain tried to join, but moved less than an inch and made a very nasty, high-pitched moan that lasted about 30 seconds.
Everyone burst out laughing.
Why do you need a robot that automatically opens your curtains anyway, they asked. “Need” is a bit strong, but the temptation of the SwitchBot is automation. Wouldn’t it be nice to wake up to the sunlight touching your face instead of an alarm (or, in our house, a crying cat for breakfast)?
This is the premise of this charming device. It can be easily adapted to most types of curtains in a matter of minutes. At a cost of $ 99 or $ 189 for two (and you’ll need two for most curtains), your old, tired curtains are smart. You can open and close them remotely from your phone using the SwitchBot app, or you can program them to open and close at certain times.
But, as can be assumed from my first attempt, the SwitchBot has quite a few flaws that can make you want to completely rip off your curtains.
Finicky Hardware
.jpg?w=560&ssl=1)
After the pathetic first attempt to open my curtains, I tried to reinstall the SwitchBot. I placed one in the right curtain and one in the left. There is a kind of ratchet arm that goes over the curtain rod, with small wheels inside, and attach it to the rod between the first and second curtain ring. (You can also get SwitchBots that work with U Rail and I Rail curtains.)
I have light curtains with a uniform wand, so there’s no reason for the SwitchBot to have problems. Unfortunately, after playing a lot, I still wasn’t lucky. I contacted the company and received new models to test them and I am pleased to say that they work much better.
Still, even the new batch is far from perfect. For example, SwitchBots don’t always open curtains as wide as I do by hand. They also tend to leave a gap between the curtains when closed. And I can’t imagine them going well with thick curtains after seeing them struggle to fully open my little bedroom.
Pair robots with a Bluetooth phone app and calibrate open and closed positions. It is an easy and fast process. You can then tap an app button to open or close the curtains, although the app takes a few seconds to load and then a few seconds for the SwitchBot to start moving. It’s not too long a wait, but it’s faster to get up and do it by hand.
The best method is to automatically program the curtains to open and close them at your favorite times. There’s also a light detection mode to turn on automatic aperture when it identifies a certain level of illumination, but this feature is still in beta and didn’t work well for me.
You can use voice commands to control the curtains with Alexa, Google Assistant, or Siri, but you need to purchase and set up a SwitchBot Hub Mini ($ 39). I tried it with Alexa and Google Assistant, and the Hub did the job, but I had to ask it to open or close each curtain separately.