The motor is labelled as model SZ29Z370, on which I could not find any information online. Appears to be a small geared motor, which is properly lubricated and produces minimal sound. You could barely hear it in a standard home atmosphere.

The Aqara Roller Shade Driver E1 is a retrofit roller shade controller that does not require a complicated installation and can work with your existing Roller Shade by operating the beaded cord. It does not require dedicated wiring and can run both wirelessly from the built-in battery or being plugged into a power supply via the provided USB Type-C cable. Features All-Round Compatibility: Compatible with most popular ecosystems and can be controlled by voice. HomeKit, Alexa, Google, IFTTT, Alice, Marusya are supported. The Motion Sensor located at the top of your bed will detect when you are going to bed and will trigger the Roller Shade Driver E1 to close your roller blinds to make your sleep more comfortable. At the bottom of the case, the reset button is conveniently placed next to a 5V USB-C port. Aqara installing a USB-C instead of MicroUSB port gives me some assurance of the quality of the device and the company’s willingness to follow and adapt newer standards.

Q&A

To ensure the correct operation of the Aqara E1 Roller Shade Driver, you need to set the correct fully open and fully closed positions of your shades. To do this:

The Aqara Roller Shade Driver E1 is a retrofit roller shade controller that does not require a complicated installation and can work with your existing Roller Shade by operating the beaded cord. It does not require dedicated wiring and can run both wirelessly from the built-in battery or being plugged into a power supply via the provided USB Type-C cable. Month Battery Life*: Thanks to Aqara battery-saving technologies, industry-leading battery life is achieved. You don't need to worry about charging the device every few weeks. I have other devices using Z2M that are working without any issues so the problem seems to be isolated only to this device. Also to note, after a while, the device works again as intended regardless of the errors still showing up in the Z2M logs. Has anyone experienced anything similar in Z2M? Description Aqara Roller Shade Driver (Duo) Starter Kit – Your gateway to a smarter and more convenient home

USB Type-C for Charging or Constant Power Supply: You can choose between two installation modes: wired and wireless. For charging or powering the device constantly, the most modern and versatile Type-C port is used. I can’t speak for anyone else, but since I live in a home with roller blinds in each bedroom, it had been a goal of mine to at least get some of these blinds automated. With the cost of custom automated blinds being out of my reach, ‘Retrofit’ options (meaning a solution that adds smart functionality to existing blinds) seemed to be the easiest option. NAS and larger capacity microSD support: Apart from the microSD card, which now has an increased maximum capacity of up to 512 GB, the G2H Pro also supports local NAS storage that uses the Samba protocol. The fully open position can be set by setting the shade to the desired position and then pressing the up button 5 times in succession. If successful the light turns blue and flashes 3 times.

Smart Home Automations: Connect the device to the Aqara Home app, and you will be able to forget about operating the device manually: after configuring the automations, it will just work by itself! Another matter you may need to keep in mind is, the Aqara roller shade driver cannot join the network on its own. Without the hub, it would simply act as a two-button controller to open and close the shade. However, the good news is, Aqara offers some choices for the gateway to work with the shade driver. I will list them below for your reference. Should I buy one? The boss lady voluntarily requests to install this review unit in her studio. If I am not mistaken, this is the first time she actually pays attention to an item I review. I am happy to see how easy it is able to find a place to go. Actually, isn’t it a great sign of the potential user demand on the market? Installation is seriously easy I’ve already stated my feelings regarding the Soma option, and so it comes as no surprise that both official HomeKit support and Zigbee easily outdo unofficial support via a custom RPi, and Bluetooth. It’s slower than the Soma, which in its second iteration managed to increase the speed fourfold over the original version. That said, it’s a LOT quieter, and given these are used in a bedroom, that counts for a lot, and so I can live with a slightly slower motor. In my tests I came up with the following results;Standby Time: Two months (based on controlling a roller shade of 1.8m x 1.8m up and down once a day) Alexa is my weapon of choice for creating triggers to control the blind, and again, integration is super simple. Just discover the devices and enable the Aqara skill. Once that's done, you can create routines like you would any other. For example, you can use voice, time of day, sunrise and sunset to control the blinds while using other smart devices to trigger a routine. You can also control the percentage you want the blind to open. What I like: Because there are so many features and possibilities you can do with Aqara Camera Hub, I really want to share some of my experiences with you, especially the monitoring and alarm system. But, it is not realistic to squeeze everything into this single review and, I would like to focus on one thing at a time. Therefore, we will prepare another review just for the Camera Hub G3 in a few days, stay tuned! Aqara Home is a new playground It's a fantastic product and is everything I hoped for when I imagined smart blinds. Here's what I like most: As for the downside, I puzzled my brain and can only think of one tiny hiccup. During the configuration of scenarios, I was confused by ‘Time’ and ‘Acting Time’ for part of the conditions to be met. For some reason, when I set a ‘Time’, I could not save the scenario successfully. Apart from that, the shade driver E1 is a perfect solution to add smart control for the roller shades.