Aqara Roller Shade Driver E1 – Make Your Dumb Blinds Smart

Since I live in a home with roller blinds in each bedroom, it had been a goal of mine to get at least 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) seems to be the easiest option.

Thankfully, Aqara has now released the Aqara Roller Shade Driver E1. It uses Zigbee, so it works with your Aqara hub, and it’s officially supported in HomeKit, and because it uses Zigbee (Zigbee 3.0 in fact) reaction times are fast and reliable.

So, today’s video puts this new device through its paces to determine if it’s a good fit for your home. The E2 is currently being sold on Amazon.co.uk, although at the time of writing, this product has sold out, with new stock coming in a couple of weeks.