Ikea's HomeKit-ready Smart Shades to ship in August

AppleInsider · June 12, 2019 8:25PM

One of the most hotly anticipated HomeKit products in recent memory, Ikea's Smart Shades, will finally launch in August after a months-long delay, the company says.

The new launch date was spotted on Ikea's flagship Swedish website by a Reddit user.

"We appreciate your interest in our smart blinds KADRILJ and FYRTUR," text reads. "These blinds were intended to be sold in February, but will now be available in August, according to our forecasts."

Ikea first confirmed a lengthy delay in March, saying it needed the time for "an opportunity for improved functionality" -- something repeated in the latest news. That's believed to refer to out-of-the-box support for HomeKit, Amazon Alexa, and Google Assistant, at least with a Tradfri hub.

Very few HomeKit-compatible shades are on the market, typically because of factors like custom sizing and elaborate electronics. That can also push prices into the thousands of dollars for a living room or kitchen.

The Smart Shades get around this hurdle with a limited selection of sizes, and a rechargeable battery that has to be periodically removed. People will be able to buy extra battery packs to minimize downtime.

M68000 · June 12, 2019 8:43PM

Thanks for the update on this. Looks like a cool product

tjwolf · June 12, 2019 8:54PM

I wonder how Ikea deals with the non-standard widths of US windows? Will they sell 2-3 widths and let the customer cut them to the exact size at home?

StrangeDays · June 12, 2019 9:41PM

Very cool. The ones I'd heard were good, Serena, were ridiculously priced for my window dimensions -- like $600 a window. Yeaaaahh, no.

Sweden has some long summer nites and while visiting friends I appreciated their blackout shades. Good to see Ikea getting into this space! Will def keep my eye open for what they come up with...only drawback is the styles of rolling shades tend to limit themselves to pretty boring beige-modern.

eightzero · June 12, 2019 9:48PM

It seems like this is ripe for some engineering efforts to existing installations. Can someone make a motor unit to retrofit onto existing blinds and shades? Maybe less than thousands?

jbdragon · June 13, 2019 12:21AM

eightzero said:

It seems like this is ripe for some engineering efforts to existing installations. Can someone make a motor unit to retrofit onto existing blinds and shades? Maybe less than thousands?

You can get kits for 2-3" Blinds. You can see them here at mysmartblinds.com. The only issue is no Homekit support. I converted 2 of my blinds. They have a solar panel option so you don't have to worry about charging up the battery pack. You can use the app, or get the Hub allowing Alexa, and I think Google support. There was suppose to be SIRI support also, but that's been removed a while back and so I haven't updated any of my other blinds. So I use Alexa on my Ecobee 4. Sometimes Alexa on my Apple Watch. But this only tilts the blinds from close to open. It doesn't pull these type of blinds UP and down. But that's generally all I did manually anyway. You still have manual control.

I don't see any easy way to retrofit roll up type blinds. These Ikea ones look interesting, but it seems like it's really going to be a select few windows. I don't expect them to fit any of my Windows.

davgreg · June 13, 2019 9:42AM

StrangeDays said:

Very cool. The ones I'd heard were good, Serena, were ridiculously priced for my window dimensions -- like $600 a window. Yeaaaahh, no.

Sweden has some long summer nites and while visiting friends I appreciated their blackout shades. Good to see Ikea getting into this space! Will def keep my eye open for what they come up with...only drawback is the styles of rolling shades tend to limit themselves to pretty boring beige-modern.

Many European homes have built-in metal shutters on the outside that can also function as a shade. When I lived in Germany in the 1980's they were very common in most newer construction.

macgui · June 13, 2019 12:35PM

First, the idea of automated shades is great! Roll up or down, fully or part way, at will and/or on schedule... Both cool and brilliant!

AI said:
Very few HomeKit-compatible shades are on the market, typically because of factors like custom sizing and elaborate electronics. That can also push prices into the thousands of dollars for a living room or kitchen.

Is this referring to shades in general or just HomeKit shades. I realize that HomeKit compatibility does require licensing, formerly specific hardware, now specific software/firmware?

Not to hijack but does anybody have a US source for manual custom black out rollup shades? I've got one window that really needs it.

jpellino · June 13, 2019 1:24PM

Golly, one side of it faces out a window. Ripe for solar charging, no?

gutengel · June 13, 2019 2:19PM

I hope these are quiet, all the motored blinds I've see if my friends places are very loud, or get loud over time. Looking forward for Ai to make a full review on Ikea HomeKit compatible products, because they were pretty buggy when they first launched.

maestro64 · June 13, 2019 3:40PM

Many years ago we put in a motorized blind on a window which was in another room and casted light into family room onto the TV so we put it in so we could close it when watching TV. It was nice to have but it ran off AA batteries, so they did not last long and the blind had issues and broke after a couple of years. Back them the motorize option was $100 cost adder, you could argue it was $10 worth of parts to make this work, so it was kind of a rip off. Today these motorize blind are $200 and $300 options, and all they really did was add a wifi chip and rechargeable batteries.

You realize have to think hard to make sure it worth the money to put these in, i would say definitely worth an extra $50 but over $100 you really have to be spoiled to have these on all your windows.

AlanWynn · June 13, 2019 4:34PM

SomaSmarthome.com has HomeKit compatible retrofit kits. They can currently raise and adjust the tilt, and it looks like the plan to have an in roll motor as well. I have not used them, but they look reasonable. Waiting for the blind to be installed in my master bedroom. Looked at Serena, but it took the price from $150 to $900. :-(

ivanh · June 14, 2019 1:43AM

IKEA products come with only 1 year warranty vs e.g. Philips Hue with 3 years. IKEA LED light bulbs I used never survive 2 years. Even though some of them burnt out within a year, will I spend an hour or 2 to queue up in the single staff with long face and fill a 2 pages form to replace just one lightbulb? Or 4 pages for 2 lightbulbs purchased at different dates?

Experience: the Hub is slow and you’ll wonder if it’s working. Bulbs (electronic) burn out and overheat easily. They need a dimmer, include it to your budget, if you need to dim individually, unlike Philips Hue bulbs that you don’t. Every individual device uses NFC to connect, and the process is painfully slow.

gatorguy · June 14, 2019 2:14AM

Depending on sizing and color I may well try these in the bedrooms where it kinda makes sense. Time these for rise and shine, close at dusk, etc. Not likely these would be available for the large windows in the rest of the house.

gutengel · June 14, 2019 4:25PM

I was gonna write "wait a week and see how they delay this thing again!" well not even 3 days and Ikea already "claimed" it will launch on Oct 1st... https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2019/6/14/18679040/ikea-smart-blinds-october-1st-release-date-us

docno42 · June 17, 2019 3:29AM

Meh - I have some Bali motorized shades on two windows that are two stories in the air in my 2 story living room and they were like $350 a piece and controlled with zWave. Integrated with my Homeseer install seamlessly and in seconds. Homeassistant can bridge zWave with Homekit. Ikea is going too have to significantly beat that pricing before I take a flyer at them - as others point out their reliability and longevity can be a real crap shoot with many of their products.

My big problem with Homekit is compared to Homeseer and zWave/Insteon the latency is easily double, triple or more. Even using Apple TV as a local homekit hub. Dunno what they are doing with Homekit but the latency on it is nuts compared to other local, non-cloud only solutions (and yes, with Homeseer I have seamless remote access via "the cloud" if I want it too).

gatorguy · August 20, 2019 6:14PM

gutengel said:

I was gonna write "wait a week and see how they delay this thing again!" well not even 3 days and Ikea already "claimed" it will launch on Oct 1st... https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2019/6/14/18679040/ikea-smart-blinds-october-1st-release-date-us

Another fly...
On top of the delay Apple's Homekit won't be supported at launch either, Google Assistant/Home only. Homekit support will come later this year tho.
This at least shows how they'll work.

Mike Wuerthele · August 20, 2019 6:56PM

gatorguy said:

gutengel said:

I was gonna write "wait a week and see how they delay this thing again!" well not even 3 days and Ikea already "claimed" it will launch on Oct 1st... https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2019/6/14/18679040/ikea-smart-blinds-october-1st-release-date-us

Another fly...
On top of the delay Apple's Homekit won't be supported at launch either, Google Assistant/Home only. Homekit support will come later this year tho.
This at least shows how they'll work.

AMAZING. A delay in HomeKit for Ikea products. This is my shocked face.

Ikea's HomeKit-ready Smart Shades to ship in August

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