We've spent a lot of time thinking about blinds but we also want automated curtains in some of the rooms as they'll be warmer in winter. As with automated blinds, one company seems to have the automated curtain market sewn up in this country: Silent Gliss. The Silent Gliss autoglide curtains are available from a number of sites including Simply Automate.

The most basic Dawn and Dusk model is most suited to automation - you can replace the dawn and dusk sensor with an X10 curtain controller. I ordered one of the curtain tracks (a 250cm one for 245 GBP), see Dawn and Dusk Autoglide Curtain Track. I didn't get the X10 curtain controller (88 GBP) as we're looking in to the VIOM for control applications at the moment.

We came across one post that mentioned using a Somfy Centralis DC IB for controlling a Somfy DC blind motor. It seems to drive a motor in both directions based on up down and common inputs - seems to be just what we need. The manual didn't have enough information for us to be confident about this unit, but since it wasn't a hugely expensive component I decided to buy it and give it a go. It's available from Simply Automate for 28.42 GBP: Centralis DC IB.

We've also started thinking about using something other than X10 for some of the controls now. This was partly motivated by the number of X10 devices we would need to control the blinds. See Beanz's [future, ed.] post on the VIOM.

The motor arrived yesterday, it was just in a box with no further instructions. It has just two wires coming out of it.

We know from the online manual that it runs at 12 or 24 vdc. After a bit of experimentation we get it to turn in one direction, but can't get it to rotate the other way. We think you need to reverse the polarity of the supply to change the direction (which we are doing manually), but it will only go one way. Reading the manual reveals that the plastic bits on the end of the motor are actually buttons that can be release to set the stop distance in each direction.

By playing around with the buttons we do manage the get the motor going in both directions, but we don't manage to set the stop distances - the motor seems to just keep going while it has power. At least we know that we should be able to control the motor if we can find a way to switch the polarity of power to the motor.

I do a bit of research and find that the name for something which allows you to switch the polarity of an output by activating two different inputs is an H-bridge. You can buy these for use in building robots. We're thinking of using X10, but this approach would require two X10 universal modules (or similar), one to make a circuit to raise the blind and one to lower it.

I try and find out what other people have done, but most seem to have bought the full kit.

I've spent a few days looking at possibilities for automating window blinds.

Here's what I'd like to be able to do:

• Have all blinds in the house come down at dusk and go up after we've gone to work

• Have a blackout blind in our bedroom go up (behind curtains) in the summer to wake us up naturally (but not at 4:30 am as has been happening recently ...), this needs the motor to be pretty quiet, don't know if this is possible.

• Have the blind in our bedroom double up as a projector screen (high quality isn't a big deal for this). The blind should go inside the window with curtains outside for that cinema effect ;-)

After much googling it seems that Somfy pretty much have the blind market sewn up. Various of the automation sites sell blind kits that include Somfy motors.

Simply Automate have a one blind kit for 327 GBP which seems a bit pricey, especially when there's no proper automation yet. The kit includes an RF remote (not much use, we want central control from a computer).

I looked inside the kit and realized that the components are also sold individually. Interesting, which bits do I really need and which can be replace by cheaper bits. Well, the motor is certainly necessary and I'll need the aluminium to hang the blind on and the various bits to mount it. The cost of these bits came to 107 GBP + 6 GBP for 100m of bell wire which should do several blinds. The challenge was now to find out whether it was possible to control and power the blind for less than 200 GBP (roughly the cost of buying the other Somfy parts in the kit).

Before purchasing I wanted to find out a bit about the motor. There was surprisingly little information out there. It''s an LT28 DC motor and there is some information on the Simply Automate site and some on the Somfy site. Not enough for me to be confident that I understand how to drive it though. I decide to buy it anyway, hopefully it will come with more information.