This solution is a bit of a hack.  By disabling Get support, there is no way to determine the state of the blinds.  While ON/OFF switch can be used to open or close the blinds - and that retains status, any other position is not reflected in HA.  As noted in my other post in this forum section, the switches have their own set of problems as well.

I'd really like to be able to use these blinds as intended and slide the tilt to the desired position and have visual (and programatic) indication in Home Assistant of the state.

Is there any other solution on the horizon, such as updated firmware?

After much tinkering, I'm happy to report that I've found a suitable workaround working quite well for my needs.

The solution involves creating a cover template wrapper around the iblind.  By using optimistic mode, Home Assistant will track the tilt position internally overcoming the lack of visibility when disabling get support.  Of course this has the possibility of getting out of sync if for whatever reason the zwave message fails to deliver or take action.  But I can deal with that...  For reference here is one of my blinds:

cover:

  - platform: template

      office_blind_left:

        friendly_name: Left Office Blind

        device_class: shutter

        optimistic: true

        open_cover:

          service: light.turn_on

          data:

            entity_id: light.office_iblinds_left_tilt

            brightness: 160

        close_cover:

          service: light.turn_off

          entity_id: light.office_iblinds_left_tilt

        set_cover_position:

          service: light.turn_on

          data_template:

            entity_id: light.office_iblinds_left_tilt

            brightness: "{{ (position | float * 1.6 | round(1)) | int }}"

Note:  I use this instead of the switch provided to open and close the blind.  This code will allow you to calibrate the 'open' position on a scale from 1-255.  This is particularly useful if you have multiple blinds side-by-side and each have auto-calibrated to a slightly different position.  In the above example, 160 is the ideal open position.  When mapping that to a position number for the cover from 0-100, that is a scaling factor of 1.6 (fully open: 1.6 * 100 = 160).  This setup will not allow you to open your blinds past that position (so the slats are inverted) - but that's no big deal for me.

Hope this helps all the Home Assistant users out there.

I am having an issue where I have HA adjust the blinds to a percentage and the blinds go from one end to the other, as if there is no in between stage.  For example, the blinds are in a closed state, and I have HA open the blinds to 30%.  The blinds then proceed to go thru a full range of motion to the other "closed" state instead of stopping at 30% as intended.  Any idea if this hack would fix that issue, or do I need to dig into it deeper?

Thanks!

@mindblender

I posted a workaround that gets the blinds fully working in Home Assistant  - but it's waiting moderation before it posts.  Maybe because I included a link.  Some kind of spam prevention. 

You will need to implement the openzwave xml modifications noted above, plus create a cover template.  Full details will be hopefully be shown soon.

@eric

Ping?

@manonstreet

Excellent!  I will keep my eye out for yor post with the fix.

Posted by: @manonstreet

@mindblender

I posted a workaround that gets the blinds fully working in Home Assistant  - but it's waiting moderation before it posts.  Maybe because I included a link.  Some kind of spam prevention. 

You will need to implement the openzwave xml modifications noted above, plus create a cover template.  Full details will be hopefully be shown soon.

@eric

Ping?

Thanks for the Ping!   Missed the moderation notice...   Nice work 🙂 

@eric, can you explain the situations corrected by your initial post? Specifically, what is the "undesirable behavior" you refer to, and what is fixed by setting the min level to 1 instead of 0? I found your post before I really tried using my blinds because I was trying to figure out a different issue and didn't experience the behavior you refer to first-hand (I did solve my other issue; see next paragraph). 

Incidentally, I was boggled by the fact the iBlinds device added switch and light entities to my Home Assistant instead of a cover entity. I got a tip from someone on the Home Assistant forum to change `specific=0` to `specific=6` on the Node element in zwcfg*.xml and restart, which solved that weirdness. 

Do you know who/what is responsible for the source XML that drops into zwcfg*.xml when an iBlinds device is added to the z-wave network? With all the bugs in the xml it makes me wonder what else is wrong in the XML and where/who can fix it for everyone. 

I did a combination of things to make mine work.  It's a lot of trouble but I guess Home Assistant users are glutton for punishment.  Ultimately I got what I wanted with some work..

I'm using a combination ZigBee/Zwave stick (GoControl/Nortek HUSBZB-1).  The trick (for mine) to save the XML file and not have it overwritten is this:

• Stop Z Wave Network
• Make changes to XML file
• Start Z Wave Network
• Hit Save Configuration in the same area you Start/Stop your network
• Now after you reboot your XML file will not be overwritten

Using specific=6 makes HA recognize it as a cover already so no changes needed to your config YAML then I use 3 scripts I made to change my set of 3 blinds to the most used combination (open/partial tilt/closed).  Scripts examples at very bottom!

The changes to the relevant section of zwcfg_*.xml:

	<Node id="24" name="" location="" basic="4" generic="17" specific="6" roletype="7" devicetype="6400" nodetype="0" type="Multilevel Switch" listening="false" frequentListening="true" beaming="true" routing="true" max_baud_rate="40000" version="4" query_stage="Complete">
		<Manufacturer id="287" name="HAB Home Intelligence LLC">
			<Product type="3" id="d" name="iblinds" />
		</Manufacturer>
		<CommandClasses>
			<CommandClass id="32" name="COMMAND_CLASS_BASIC" version="1" request_flags="4" mapping="38">
				<Instance index="1" />
			</CommandClass>
			<CommandClass id="37" name="COMMAND_CLASS_SWITCH_BINARY" version="1" request_flags="4" getsupported="false" innif="true">
				<Instance index="1" />
				<Value type="bool" genre="user" instance="1" index="0" label="Switch" units="" read_only="false" write_only="false" verify_changes="false" poll_intensity="0" min="0" max="0" value="False" />
			</CommandClass>
			<CommandClass id="38" name="COMMAND_CLASS_SWITCH_MULTILEVEL" version="4" getsupported="false" innif="true">
				<Instance index="1" />
				<Value type="byte" genre="user" instance="1" index="0" label="Level" units="" read_only="false" write_only="false" verify_changes="false" poll_intensity="0" min="1" max="255" value="2" />

Script example, I also have "open" (level ~40) and "closed" (level ~99) - yes my entity names are hideous:

'1234567890988':
  alias: LR Blinds Tilt
  sequence:
  - data:
      entity_id: cover.center_blind_level_3
      position: 78
    entity_id: cover.center_blind_level_3
    service: cover.set_cover_position
  - data:
      entity_id: cover.hab_home_intelligence_llc_iblinds_level
      position: 76
    entity_id: cover.hab_home_intelligence_llc_iblinds_level
    service: cover.set_cover_position
  - data:
      entity_id: cover.right_blind_level_2
      position: 77
    entity_id: cover.right_blind_level_2
    service: cover.set_cover_position

And finally here is my front end UI, the top two are my motorized bali roller shades and bottom three are my iblinds retrofit "faux wood blinds":

And the code for this:

      - cards:
          - entity: script.1230000000
            icon: 'mdi:view-headline'
            icon_height: 30px
            name: Blinds Open
            tap_action:
              action: call-service
              service: script.1230000000
            type: entity-button
          - entity: script.1240000000
            icon: 'mdi:texture'
            icon_height: 30px
            name: Blinds Tilt
            tap_action:
              action: call-service
              service: script.1240000000
            type: entity-button
          - entity: script.1250000000
            icon: 'mdi:view-list'
            icon_height: 30px
            name: Blinds Close
            tap_action:
              action: call-service
              service: script.1250000000
            type: entity-button
        type: horizontal-stack

@eric allow my above post!  need more activity in this subforum, don't want HA to be forgotten.

Posted by: @contactcr

@eric allow my above post!  need more activity in this subforum, don't want HA to be forgotten.

what is the current status of Iblinds and HA in 2020?  Has the zwave database been upgraded as admin said was needed in the OP?  

is it possible for Iblinds to release a firmware update to fix the issue? 

a lot of people are going to be switching to home assistant now that wink is dead so hopefully this is or will be resolved properly soon without hacks.

Posted by: @eric

issuing a poll command immediately following the position command can cause iblinds to experience undesired behavior

How soon can we expect a firmware update or similar to fix this? Clearly there needs to be something better here than what we have-- this would surely impact other usage of thise on OpenZWave, which is very popular.

The workarounds here work (thank you guys!) but are clearly hacks. I want to be able to have conditions based on the current setting for the blinds that is accurate. For a Z-Wave device, I expect to be able to work with it properly. 

Note, I own 4 of these devices now and have struggled to get the first two working somewhat with HA with scenes. I now delete most of the other scene settings for them and just use current_position to set them. Unfortunately it needs "state" yet I had some blinds handling that as open when I meant close and similar... so I just always set it to open and just change the level current-position. (See code below)

I'd buy at least 6 more of these if you can get the HA behavior right. I don't think you understand how much the HA audience is your target audience. 🙂

from scenes.yaml:

Topic solved, closing topic and moving to most recent post: http://communityarchive.myiblinds.com/community/postid/179/