Brunt Blind Engine - Smart Motorized Blind, Make Your Existing Blind To Smart, Automated, Motorized Blind, Connected Home, Home Automation, Compatible with Alexa

I was a bit cautious about buying this product, as it is pretty expensive. I took the plunge and ordered one to try. Installation was pretty straight forward, although I tried the gear marked as ball chain, as that is what my blinds have, and that didn't work great so I switched it to the cord gear, which works so much better. The first blind I used it for was approximately 1.6m wide day/night blind in my bedroom. It worked great opening and closing with no issues. It took a few attempts to get the highest and lowest level as with the day/nights blinds its tricky to get the lines to line up correctly, but got there with persistence! Integration with Alexa was easy enough and I use the Routines on the Alexa app to set automatic opening and closing times, as you can schedule using sunrise and sunset, as apose just times, which works really well. I have since moved my blind engine into my bay window in my lounge and have now purchased a further 4, as my bay has 5 individual blinds, and they work perfect, so far! I love these and everybody comments on how great they are when they see them work. Yes they are pretty expensive but they look great, feel solid and its a bit of peace of mind to know that if I am out the blinds will close themselves to offer that bit of added security! I would definitely recommend these and I will probably get more, for the rest of the house, in time as they aren't cheap!

I've had this for over a year now. It was fairly easy to set up. The rope needs to be tight. It must be screwed to the wall, there's no way the sticky pads would work. When installed correctly it seems pretty powerful. When it works it's fine, however after a couple of days it loses connection - the buttons on the device work but it doesn't work from the app and doesn't work on the configured schedule. Initially I thought this problem was due to it being distant from my wireless router, so I moved the router closer to the blind, but this made no difference. I've contacted Brunt support several times, both on the chat window on the website and via email, but they don't respond. When they do, they ask for the serial number then don't respond any further. As I've had it for a while now I'm stuck with it. I've worked around the problems by plugging it into a plug-in timer which switches it off and on again in the middle of the night. Most of the time it seems to be able to keep running for 24 hours without losing connection.

I purchased one of these and was pretty impressed with its ability to control the blinds via schedule or automated through a smart assistant (Google Home worked pretty well, Alexa still a work in progress) Hey google open the sitting room blinds 50%, worked perfectly. Routine configured within Alexa custom commands to Alexa open the sitting room blinds, she says hey google open the sitting room bly ends 50%, and it worked too. I didn't want to use the half baked welcome and goodbye commands. All was good for a couple of weeks, so I decided I'd get another. Another week or so passes and the first one stops working on the schedule, and no longer responds to voice control. The app shows this as disconnected, no problem, I'll just follow the simple enough re-connection setup. Or so I think. Tried the method of resetting blind length, countless time tried removing and re-adding, but nothing worked. I should also mention that each time you try this you need to set the full open and closed blind, so you have to wait for the system to wind fully up (and down again after it fails) then 70 seconds for it to fail, then remove the device and restart the process hoping it will connect. Now the first device cannot be added back as it never connects back to the wifi and as such removes all ability to automate the blinds. The blind still functions correctly via the buttons on the device, but I didn't buy this for that. Anyway, while I was trying to fix the first one, the second has started to do the same thing, but I've not tried to fix that. They are both on different wifi connections, and I've tried connecting the first to other wifi networks with no success. Internet is fine, network is fine, DHCP works correctly, address pool isn't full, other devices connect without issue, the network is not on 5ghz, anyway they were connecting but just decided to stop. All this said, I've not contacted the support desk yet, but I may update the score if they can assist with this. Edit - Emailed with support. They were helpful enough, but it was a lot of redoing the same steps and suggestions of reset network config on previously working phone. Anyway, the app updated this week and while the devices didn't connect again straight away they both appeared to work again the next day (after re-adding the first) Not sure if something else happened in the home as everything has been moved around for Christmas. Anyway the both devices are now working, so everything is good again. Will update if this changes. When the system works, (and I will assume it is working for good now) it's pretty good, some slippage on one blind, but I think I need to fix the mount using the screws, don't think the adhesive strips gives enough purchase over time. Changing score up to 4 as it does what is expected again. Losing 1 for slippage and limited Alexa integration

I've followed Brunt since their original kickstarter campaign and have always thought this product is very neat. I struggled a little with version one as the motor was not really powerful enough for my blind - but these issues have been ironed out with version 2. The unit itself is quite simple and looks fine on a wall. I'll probably opt to hide the cable with some speaker-cable covers, although it is fairly discrete anyway. The installation is extremely simple and effective and only takes 5 or so minutes. I haven't used Alexa integration, as I only wanted to schedule my blinds to go up and down at set times - and this can easily be done within the Brunt app. Ultimately, if you're looking for a relatively cheap and straight forward solution to automate pre-installed blinds, then I think this is probably the best solution available.

The Blind Engine was quick and easy to install and link to Google Home. It looks unobtrusive and has a decent length power cable. However, I've found it to be quite unreliable. The reason seems to vary: sometimes it will lose connection to the Internet, sometimes the server is down, sometimes there seems to be an issue with the connection between the Google Assistant servers and the Brunt servers. Sometimes the scheduled actions I have set up just don't happen. Whatever the reason, this unfortunately works less often than the other smart home devices I have set up in my house. It is also quite slow to respond to commands from Google Home even when it does work. So sadly, despite the good first impression, I can't really recommend it until these issues are resolved.

I have been wanting to buy this for ages but had been put off by some of the negative reviews. So far (2 days) I'm really impressed. It performs exceptionally well, I love that I have the blind opens on a timer so, even when I'm not home the blinds open and close. I had some trouble getting the blind to 'connect' as it took 2 attempts to set it up. Since setting it up though, it has been flawless. I really want to buy more of these to dot around the rest of my house, but using this one as a test to ensure it'll be reliable before I invest several hundred pounds in more them. I hope Brunt continues with this product and develop a 'Blind engine 2' with improvements to the setup process and perhaps a metal gear as I'm concerned how long the plastic gear will actually last. That said, I'm sure I can contact them for a replacement if the plastic wears away. So far though, I'm impressed! Edit: I've had this up for weeks now and still not encountered any issues. Funny enough, bit long after I bought the blind engine they release the blind engine 2 which can pull larger/heavier blinds! I contacted brunt and purchased more gears so if they wear out, I have replacements waiting! I really love the blind engine, my sister thinks I'm lazy for having these (I've since bought more) but I think they're fab!

I was really excited about the blind closer engine, I've wanted to automate my blinds closing for a very long time and thought I'd found the solution with this engine. Having seen videos of the quick setup I was sold on this being the solution. Well I couldn't have been more wrong, the issues with this blind engine are all because of the very bad android app that is needed to set it up. My first day trying to setup the engine the app kept crashing on setup, I tried multiple phones, tablets and the issue was the same the app just keeps crashing. I was so frustrated I emailed their app developer email address to report it. A day or two later an app update was available, after multiple tries across devices I finally got it setup. My next issue was the engine stopping working after each open or close, requiring me to manually press the physical button on the hardware to reset it. So the engine doesn't work as it should and the Alexa integration is beyond poor, it doesn't understand commands and requires you to say ALEXA TELL BRUNT TO PLAY WELCOME to open the blinds. No one is going to remember that phrase and for me who has a smart home and sets them up for others, the use of devices needs to be simple, like open blinds, close blinds. Having to physically touch the engine when it doesn't work by the app is a deal breaker for me when I wanted to get a few and set one up for it disabled mum. This should make like easier for her, not harder by physically having to reset the machine or remember long unnatural phrases. There's no IFTTT integration which is a basic requirement for smart home products, it let's them do things they otherwise couldn't do, like at the blinds to open and close at sunset and sunrise,a very basic feature the blinds don't have, so you can't automate them without setting a time. My blind engine doesn't show up within alexa devices so I can't even automate it with routines. Should the blind length need recalibrate in the app you need to set it all up again as I did yesterday and the app crashed over 10 times in a row, even on different devices. The android app is full of known bugs and device conflicts. I've spoken with the seller support team at Brunt who make the device and have to say they are really nice and friendly and honest. They are aware of all the issues above, especially the android app issue, but I wasn't impressed when their solution to me not being able to set up on android was for me to set up on am iphone! I don't own an iPhone, never will and what use would setting up on iPhone be if I still couldn't control my blinds on android? At £100 with all the bugs in the app that make it impossible for me to use without fixing them, poor ALEXA integration so no voice control and no IFTTT support, I think this blind engine is not worth it for me. It should be £50, £100 is far too much to lose on a purchase of an item that doesn't do as advertised.

I've been using this for about 2 weeks and it's been working surprisingly well for me. I'm using the Blind Engine with a fairly lightweight roller blind that has a short metal-bearded cord. Installation of the device itself was fine; the app, however, is a bit temperamental. There were a couple of confusing things during setup; firstly, the Blind Engine needs to be connected to 2.4ghz WiFi. If you have a dual band router, make sure you enable the setting to show 2.4ghz and 5ghz as separate access points. The second issue was my phone (Galaxy S8) kept trying to use the Blind Engine as an access point during setup. This was easily fixed by selecting the actual WiFi you want to use but the app never tells you this--I assumed you might've had to connect to the Blind Engine AP for configuration but this does not seem to be the case. Once the app is set up it's pretty good. The raise and lower settings work--I haven't had it lowering too much like some others have had--but there is quite a bit of delay between pressing the button and the Blind Engine actually performing the task. Sometimes it disconnects entirely but then reconnects within 30 seconds or so. Scheduling, I'm pleased to say, is flawless. I'd never pay £300 for this, and it's still a tough sell at £99, but if you have the right blinds with a suitable cord and a halfway-decent router it should be fine.