Brunt Blind Engine - Smart Motorized Blind, Make Your Existing Blind To Smart, Automated, Motorized Blind, Connected Home, Home Automation, Compatible with Alexa

I was a bit cautious about buying this product, as it is pretty expensive. I took the plunge and ordered one to try. Installation was pretty straight forward, although I tried the gear marked as ball chain, as that is what my blinds have, and that didn't work great so I switched it to the cord gear, which works so much better. The first blind I used it for was approximately 1.6m wide day/night blind in my bedroom. It worked great opening and closing with no issues. It took a few attempts to get the highest and lowest level as with the day/nights blinds its tricky to get the lines to line up correctly, but got there with persistence! Integration with Alexa was easy enough and I use the Routines on the Alexa app to set automatic opening and closing times, as you can schedule using sunrise and sunset, as apose just times, which works really well. I have since moved my blind engine into my bay window in my lounge and have now purchased a further 4, as my bay has 5 individual blinds, and they work perfect, so far! I love these and everybody comments on how great they are when they see them work. Yes they are pretty expensive but they look great, feel solid and its a bit of peace of mind to know that if I am out the blinds will close themselves to offer that bit of added security! I would definitely recommend these and I will probably get more, for the rest of the house, in time as they aren't cheap!

I've had this for over a year now. It was fairly easy to set up. The rope needs to be tight. It must be screwed to the wall, there's no way the sticky pads would work. When installed correctly it seems pretty powerful. When it works it's fine, however after a couple of days it loses connection - the buttons on the device work but it doesn't work from the app and doesn't work on the configured schedule. Initially I thought this problem was due to it being distant from my wireless router, so I moved the router closer to the blind, but this made no difference. I've contacted Brunt support several times, both on the chat window on the website and via email, but they don't respond. When they do, they ask for the serial number then don't respond any further. As I've had it for a while now I'm stuck with it. I've worked around the problems by plugging it into a plug-in timer which switches it off and on again in the middle of the night. Most of the time it seems to be able to keep running for 24 hours without losing connection.

I purchased one of these and was pretty impressed with its ability to control the blinds via schedule or automated through a smart assistant (Google Home worked pretty well, Alexa still a work in progress) Hey google open the sitting room blinds 50%, worked perfectly. Routine configured within Alexa custom commands to Alexa open the sitting room blinds, she says hey google open the sitting room bly ends 50%, and it worked too. I didn't want to use the half baked welcome and goodbye commands. All was good for a couple of weeks, so I decided I'd get another. Another week or so passes and the first one stops working on the schedule, and no longer responds to voice control. The app shows this as disconnected, no problem, I'll just follow the simple enough re-connection setup. Or so I think. Tried the method of resetting blind length, countless time tried removing and re-adding, but nothing worked. I should also mention that each time you try this you need to set the full open and closed blind, so you have to wait for the system to wind fully up (and down again after it fails) then 70 seconds for it to fail, then remove the device and restart the process hoping it will connect. Now the first device cannot be added back as it never connects back to the wifi and as such removes all ability to automate the blinds. The blind still functions correctly via the buttons on the device, but I didn't buy this for that. Anyway, while I was trying to fix the first one, the second has started to do the same thing, but I've not tried to fix that. They are both on different wifi connections, and I've tried connecting the first to other wifi networks with no success. Internet is fine, network is fine, DHCP works correctly, address pool isn't full, other devices connect without issue, the network is not on 5ghz, anyway they were connecting but just decided to stop. All this said, I've not contacted the support desk yet, but I may update the score if they can assist with this. Edit - Emailed with support. They were helpful enough, but it was a lot of redoing the same steps and suggestions of reset network config on previously working phone. Anyway, the app updated this week and while the devices didn't connect again straight away they both appeared to work again the next day (after re-adding the first) Not sure if something else happened in the home as everything has been moved around for Christmas. Anyway the both devices are now working, so everything is good again. Will update if this changes. When the system works, (and I will assume it is working for good now) it's pretty good, some slippage on one blind, but I think I need to fix the mount using the screws, don't think the adhesive strips gives enough purchase over time. Changing score up to 4 as it does what is expected again. Losing 1 for slippage and limited Alexa integration

I've followed Brunt since their original kickstarter campaign and have always thought this product is very neat. I struggled a little with version one as the motor was not really powerful enough for my blind - but these issues have been ironed out with version 2. The unit itself is quite simple and looks fine on a wall. I'll probably opt to hide the cable with some speaker-cable covers, although it is fairly discrete anyway. The installation is extremely simple and effective and only takes 5 or so minutes. I haven't used Alexa integration, as I only wanted to schedule my blinds to go up and down at set times - and this can easily be done within the Brunt app. Ultimately, if you're looking for a relatively cheap and straight forward solution to automate pre-installed blinds, then I think this is probably the best solution available.

The Blind Engine was quick and easy to install and link to Google Home. It looks unobtrusive and has a decent length power cable. However, I've found it to be quite unreliable. The reason seems to vary: sometimes it will lose connection to the Internet, sometimes the server is down, sometimes there seems to be an issue with the connection between the Google Assistant servers and the Brunt servers. Sometimes the scheduled actions I have set up just don't happen. Whatever the reason, this unfortunately works less often than the other smart home devices I have set up in my house. It is also quite slow to respond to commands from Google Home even when it does work. So sadly, despite the good first impression, I can't really recommend it until these issues are resolved.

I have been wanting to buy this for ages but had been put off by some of the negative reviews. So far (2 days) I'm really impressed. It performs exceptionally well, I love that I have the blind opens on a timer so, even when I'm not home the blinds open and close. I had some trouble getting the blind to 'connect' as it took 2 attempts to set it up. Since setting it up though, it has been flawless. I really want to buy more of these to dot around the rest of my house, but using this one as a test to ensure it'll be reliable before I invest several hundred pounds in more them. I hope Brunt continues with this product and develop a 'Blind engine 2' with improvements to the setup process and perhaps a metal gear as I'm concerned how long the plastic gear will actually last. That said, I'm sure I can contact them for a replacement if the plastic wears away. So far though, I'm impressed! Edit: I've had this up for weeks now and still not encountered any issues. Funny enough, bit long after I bought the blind engine they release the blind engine 2 which can pull larger/heavier blinds! I contacted brunt and purchased more gears so if they wear out, I have replacements waiting! I really love the blind engine, my sister thinks I'm lazy for having these (I've since bought more) but I think they're fab!

I really can't recommend this product to anyone, it's over £100 which is substancially more than any other product on the market in this category and I expected it to be of that quality and it wasn't. The app is awful I gave up trying to pair it because it wasn't working and never resolved this because I realised that a far more pressing issue was that the hardware was also not up to the ultra-premium pricing. For £109 you'd expect it to be really well made and while it is nice to look at and for super light weight blinds I am sure it would work really well, the Brunt Blind Engine is over 2x the price of the most popular competitor on Amazon that could also easily achieve the same task. It's unclear that this additional cost is in anyway spent on improving the product to match it's price point. Fundamentally the product was out of the box less than 30 minutes before I gave up and put it back in the box and left it in a pile by the door to return to Amazon after realising that two major flaws would prevent it lifting anything but the lightest blinds. The version 2 unit I had which is designed to address the weight issue clearly has a very powerful motor that could with my hand holding it with considerable force actually pull the blind up and down at both extents proving it was capable of the task, however the two major flaws meant I had to hold it or one of two things would go wrong: 1. The fact that a £109 Wi-Fi connected motor doesn't include more than 2 gears is the ultimate failure of this product because there are such a large array of blinds out there that a universal/one-size-fits-all approach doesn't translate the torque of the powerful motor into the blind because it slips through the gear. 2. The solution Brunt have for this is to apply more downward force using a ratcheting mechanism to make up for the poor meshing between the gear and the ball chain, this would probably work however the ratcheting mechanism is made of smooth plastic and kept popping off leaving the machine dragging its self up the chain. This could have easily been solved with a hasp on the end of the ratchet mechanism or a locking pin. Fundamentally the product is flawed, it isn't capable of delivering the power to the ball chain because they saved a few pennies by providing just two gears rather than 10-12 gears for the various different sizes and types of chains. Reading and watching other reviews other people's feedback falls along similar lines, where people with blinds that have an open end have attached a bit of ball chain, this could be solved by a dedicated gear with take up spool for that type of blind. I am disappointed not just because the idea of closing the blinds on a cold morning was enticing, but because the product is actually almost there. Beyond the major issue that it didn't work, they could do with improving the power adapter cable quality and fixing as no one wants a ugly white cable dangling, make it a nice matt white cable and provide some fixings to keep it tidy. Fix the app which is awful, and implement HomeKit support and some of the various features related to iOS 12/13 such as shortcuts and Siri and this product would for the £109 price tag be worth the money, alternatively reduce the cost to £39.99 and change nothing.

I was looking for motorised curtain rails for a bay window but they were coming in around £1000 plus. This has resolved my problem. I have two corded curtains on the pay, one on either side so I needed two of these. The installation process took a bit of time as I have 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz WiFi, and this only works with 2.4Ghz. The unit kept picking up the 5Ghz but then woudl not work. After connecting to a 2.4Ghz signal it worked fine. The app takes you through the procedure with images as well. A little bit of techy understand may be needed, but otherwise not too difficult to set up. I have set up a day and night schedule to open and close the curtains which overall works daily. There are odd occasions where one may not work or both may not work, but a manual press of the buttons does the job. The not working can be down to a weak WiFi signal or a possible issue with the Brunt servers. I also have the motors connected to Alexa and the commands 'Ask Brunt to play Welcome' and 'Ask Brunt to play Goodbye' work well most of the time, with both curtains being closed or opened together. Initially I had fixed the motors using the sticky tapes provided but in hot weather they started coming off so I have now screwed the units to the wall. These are a great peace of mind when on holiday, giving the impression someone is at home, especially when used to with smart lights in the house. I have a corded rail and the fittings provided allowed for use with the same without any issues. There is hardly any motor noise when activated and overall I am happy with the purchase.