Slat tilt angle at blinds opening fully #130

omegaminus · 2026-04-23T07:09:55Z

omegaminus
Apr 23, 2026

Hi Helge,
in #128 (regrettably in German) I talked about blinds not opening completely after sun elevation falling below defined minimum value or anywhere else the automation opens the blinds fully.
After doing some tests with my blinds I can inform you that the mentioned behavior results from the way my blinds operate, mainly the setting of slat angle. The setting range goes from 100% (fully closed) to 30% (slats horizontal) to 0% (slats inverted, that is outer edge up). Opening the blinds fully sets the slat angle to 0% automatically, presumably done by the Theben blinds actuator.
So, if you set full opening at 100% the blinds go up and the slat angle is set automatically to 0%. When the automation issues a slat angle command for 50% (which you assume is horizontal but is slightly tilted down in my case) afterwards, the blinds come down again to 98% to comply to that angle setting, as the resting upper position obviously requires slats at 0%.
That's also the reason I can't use your slat angle calculations but have to do my (very crude) own and setting the external entity.
I've no idea at the moment how to overcome that other than defining slat angles for closed and horizontal as range, therefore preventing the slats from become inverted. But that would not solve the problem on opening the blinds, as then you would have to issue 0% of slat angle (or dismiss it entirely).
Interestingly opening the blinds in the morning after night closure works perfectly, does the automation work differently there?
Furher discussion welcome!
LG Christian

helgeklein · 2026-04-23T18:40:00Z

helgeklein
Apr 23, 2026
Maintainer

Hi Christian,
Do I understand correctly that the morning opening function correctly opens your cover to 100% (fully open) while the reopen after heat protection function leaves the covers at around 98% (nearly fully open)?

If so, that would be quite strange. I just compared the code paths - if the Tilt open to cover open delay is 0, both should do exactly the same.

Summary:

Morning opening path: no tilt-before-open, no tilt-first preparation phase, open service first.
Heat-protection reopen with delay 0: no tilt-before-open, no tilt-first preparation phase, open service first.
Heat-protection reopen with delay greater than 0 and daytime tilt mode auto: can become tilt-first before open.

Is there any difference in your configuration between the two cases?

To further troubleshoot this, it would be helpful if you could enable debug logging (docs) and share the relevant lines from your HA log.

0 replies

omegaminus · 2026-04-24T06:31:17Z

omegaminus
Apr 24, 2026
Author

Hi Helge,
regretfully I couldn't observe the automation action yesterday (see #131). Will enable logging and let you know.
Did you remove my comment regarding reversed slat states or did it get lost somehow? This explained my remedy for the behaviour.
LG Christian

1 reply

helgeklein Apr 24, 2026
Maintainer

I have not seen or removed any additional comment of yours. Kindly re-post if possible.

omegaminus · 2026-04-25T06:10:22Z

omegaminus
Apr 25, 2026
Author

Hi Helge,
I did some further investigation into the problem of the shutters coming down to ~98% after opening them fully. As I wrote in the starting comment, that's due to the fact hat the 'resting' position fully up requires the slats to be in the 0% position.
I found out that, beside the fact that the Theben actuator uses 100% slat angle as fully closed by default according to the theben manual.
I could change that but than the blinds come down with slats inverted.
Incidentally (and luckily) there is a variable setting in the knx integration with
invert_angle: true
So that solves the problem with blinds not getting fully retracted by meeting the HA conventions of meaning (0%=fully closed, 100%=fully opened).
The problem of the inverted slats (outer edge up) still remains, as the actuator lets the slats run there on 100%. But that could be fixed by mapping the slat tilt range 80%:0% of the actuator to the HA range 100%:0%.
What do you think about that (introducing a mapping range)?
LG Christian

3 replies

helgeklein Apr 25, 2026
Maintainer

Hi Christian,
It's good to see that we're getting closer to a full resolution.

So one issue is down to the fact that Theben doesn't follow HA conventions in the open/close case. This, you could fix via a Theben integration setting.

The remaining issue concerns the slat angles. HA only defines the following:

0% = closed (no tilt)
100% = open (maximum tilt)

Interestingly, HA doesn't define angles. Currently, Smart Cover Automation assumes, somewhat naively, that 0% means vertical and 100% means horizontal. It seems the following settings would be helpful to let users override those assumptions (as suggested by you). I'm thinking of the following new settings:

Name: Vertical tilt position
- Range: 0-100
- Default: 0
Name: Horizontal tilt position
- Range: 0-100
- Default: 100

Would that solve the issue?

omegaminus Apr 27, 2026
Author

Hi Helge,
yes, the thing with inverse handling of slat angle percent setting is licked by setting the invert_angle value in KNX intgration.
So, your suggestion of defining range for the slat angle would be useful.
But, cave (excuse my Latin), the mapping of slat angle can only apply to slat tilt control in automatic mode, NEVER to mocing the blinds fully up, where the slat percent would have to stay at 100% or fully open (at least in my use case, otherwise we would be back to the opening to 98% problem). I don't know about the setting for the horizontal (fully closed) value, in my case it's irrelevant as there is no 'overclose', but there might be use cases out there where it would come in handy.
LG Christian

helgeklein Apr 27, 2026
Maintainer

Yes, those proposed new settings would only be used for tilt angle control in auto mode.

helgeklein · 2026-04-28T21:18:31Z

helgeklein
Apr 28, 2026
Maintainer

I just implemented the configuration settings for the horizontal and vertical tilt positions in main via #136. The docs have been updated.

0 replies

omegaminus · 2026-04-29T07:08:08Z

omegaminus
Apr 29, 2026
Author

Hi Helge,
got something for you to puzzle over.
Preface: tried to simulate the slat percent range by hard mapping (before you provided the front end settings) by tweaking your slat angle calculation in cover_automation.py - line 1203 and 1204 to
tilt_percent = 80.0 * (1.0 - theta_deg / 90.0)
return max(0, min(80, round(tilt_percent)))
reloaded integration - blinds came down and tilted (turns out 80% is still too much), waited for the automation to lower slats according to sun elevation change - nothing. Lux threshold sensor droppen off due to clouding, waited for blinds up after exceeding wait time - nothing. Tried to turn off automation in UI - jumped back to on, reloaded integration, restarted HA - no change, rebooted pi running HA and opened blinds manually. Left home (no connectivity). Came back after sunset+, blinds in sleeping room hadn't lowered. Looked at integration settings in UI and, aha, automation was off. Turned on, blinds came down. This morning they didn't go up at sunup+, opened them manually, they closed again, looked at the log - still in lock mode, see logfile.
Will try your range setting implementation and report.
LG Christian
PS.: Hereby applying for the worst case tester badge to be awarded to me, ☺.
PPS. sry for multiupload

0 replies

omegaminus · 2026-04-29T07:14:00Z

omegaminus
Apr 29, 2026
Author

Addendum:
Problem with blinds up after nightly cover op is (was) due to lock mode down pos, so please disregard.

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