smartblinds-ble — local control for MySmartBlinds / Tilt smart blinds (no hub, no cloud)

Keep your MySmartBlinds / Tilt motorized blinds working even after the cloud shuts down. smartblinds-ble controls the shade motors locally over Bluetooth LE — no proprietary hub, no cloud account, no phone app required — and is built to run through Home Assistant and cheap ESP32 / ESPHome Bluetooth Proxies.

Status depends on which hardware you own — the two generations share a brand and nothing else (details):

• Tilt roller shades (advertise RollerSh) — working. The encrypted protocol is implemented and verified on hardware: four shades authenticate, report live position and battery, and move on command through an ESPHome Bluetooth Proxy. Paired with the ha-smartblinds-ble Home Assistant integration.
• Legacy MySmartBlinds tilt motors (advertise SmartBlind_DFU) — unverified. That protocol comes from 2018 reverse engineering and has never been confirmed on a real motor; the constants are a labelled hypothesis. See docs/ROADMAP.md (M0-L). The cloud key-export tool below works today, independent of that.

Unofficial project. Not affiliated with, authorized by, or endorsed by MySmartBlinds, Tilt, or SmarterHome. Use at your own risk; may void your warranty.

Is this you?

If you're searching for any of the following, you're in the right place:

• "Is MySmartBlinds / Tilt shutting down / discontinued / out of business?" — the signs point that way (tiltsmarthome.com now redirects to a wind-down page, parts are unavailable, support has gone quiet).
• "MySmartBlinds app not working / won't connect / no one answers support."
• "How do I control MySmartBlinds without the hub / without the cloud / without the app?"
• "MySmartBlinds / Tilt Home Assistant integration" — a local one, not the old laggy cloud bridge.
• "Will my smart blinds keep working if the servers go offline?"
• "MySmartBlinds ESP32 / ESPHome / Bluetooth local control."

⏳ Rescue your keys now (do this before the cloud goes dark)

Each motor needs a small BLE key to accept commands. While the vendor cloud is still online, it will hand back the real key for every shade on your account after a single login. Once the cloud shuts down, keys are only recoverable the hard way (brute-force or Bluetooth sniffing). This step needs no extra hardware:

# The cloud client must come from the maintained docBliny fork — PyPI's build is
# stale and no longer logs in, so a git URL can't be pinned in a published extra:
pip install smartblinds-ble "git+https://github.com/docBliny/smartblinds-client.git"

smartblinds-import-cloud            # cloud email/password -> smartblinds-keys.json

If pip errors with externally-managed-environment, run it in a venv: python3 -m venv .venv && . .venv/bin/activate then re-run the install.

The output holds {name, mac, key} per shade and is your offline insurance if the cloud disappears. Keep it safe — it contains secrets (gitignored by default).

Legacy app only. This exports from the legacy MySmartBlinds cloud. If you set your shades up in the newer Tilt app, they live in a separate backend and won't appear here (login works but returns zero blinds). In that case, skip the cloud and read the key directly over BLE with smartblinds-find-key.

The importer logs into your own account to retrieve your own devices' keys, for interoperability with hardware you own. Use your own credentials, at your own risk.

Why this exists

The motors are ordinary Bluetooth LE devices. The only reason the vendor's hub exists is to bridge Wi-Fi → cloud → Bluetooth. With the company winding down, that cloud is a single point of failure that could take your blinds offline. This project talks to the motors directly and locally, so:

• No hub, no cloud, no account — everything stays on your LAN.
• Control routes through inexpensive ESP32 ESPHome Bluetooth Proxies for whole-home coverage, or any Home Assistant Bluetooth adapter.
• Your MySmartBlinds keep working after the cloud shuts down.

How it works

Two layers:

1. smartblinds-ble (this repo) — a small async, bleak-based Python library for talking to the motors over BLE.
2. ha-smartblinds-ble — a HACS-installable Home Assistant integration exposing each shade as a position cover plus a battery sensor, routed through ESPHome Bluetooth Proxies.

Two things everyone gets stuck on

• The per-shade key. Legacy: export it from the cloud with smartblinds-import-cloud (above) while you still can; offline fallback is brute-forcing the first byte with smartblinds-find-key. Tilt: the 32-byte pairingKey lives in the Tilt cloud store and cannot be brute-forced or sniffed — get it out before the cloud dies, and back it up, because there is no second chance. See docs/PROTOCOL.md.
• State feedback differs by generation. Tilt roller shades report real position, battery, and charge state. Legacy motors are open-loop (reads return 0xFF), so their position is tracked optimistically and changes made from the app or a physical wand are invisible.
• A position write returns before the shade arrives. The motor acknowledges and starts moving; travel takes tens of seconds. Verify by re-reading later — never by re-sending the command.

Quick start (bring-up, local adapter)

pip install smartblinds-ble     # or: pip install -e ".[dev]" to hack on it
pytest                          # protocol/encoding tests against a fake shade

Tilt roller shades (verified path) — needs the shade's MAC and its 64-hex pairing key:

import asyncio
from smartblinds_ble.tilt import TiltShadeClient

MAC = "C2:A3:D6:9B:F0:86"
KEY = bytes.fromhex("<64 hex characters from the Tilt cloud store>")

async def main():
    status = await TiltShadeClient(MAC, KEY).read_status()
    print(status.position_percent, status.battery_percent)

    # Movement is opt-in. The call returns once the shade has accepted the
    # command and started moving — tens of seconds before it arrives.
    mover = TiltShadeClient(MAC, KEY, allow_position_writes=True)
    await mover.set_position_and_read_status(100)

asyncio.run(main())

Legacy tilt motors (unverified — constants are a hypothesis):

smartblinds-find-key            # scan + brute-force keys for nearby motors

import asyncio
from smartblinds_ble import SmartBlind, discover

async def main():
    (device,) = await discover()
    blind = SmartBlind(device, key="2a")   # from the cloud export or find-key
    await blind.set_tilt_percent(50)       # flat-ish

asyncio.run(main())

FAQ

Is MySmartBlinds / Tilt going out of business?

There's no formal shutdown announcement, but the signals are strong: the operator (SmarterHome, a Hall Labs subsidiary) is winding down, tiltsmarthome.com permanently redirects to that wind-down page, replacement parts have been unavailable for a while, and support has gone quiet. The app still received updates into 2025, so the cloud is alive for now — which is exactly why you should export your keys today.

Will my blinds stop working if the cloud/app shuts down?

The blinds themselves are local Bluetooth devices, so they don't need the cloud — but the official app and hub depend on it, and you need each motor's key to control it locally. That's what this project (and the key-export tool) is for: keeping your MySmartBlinds working after the cloud goes offline.

How do I control MySmartBlinds without the hub or the app?

Get each motor's key (cloud export or brute-force), then send BLE commands with this library — directly from a computer/Raspberry Pi, or through Home Assistant + an ESP32 Bluetooth Proxy.

Does this work with Home Assistant?

Yes, for Tilt roller shades: ha-smartblinds-ble is a HACS custom repository that gives each shade a position cover and a battery sensor, with no cloud bridge. Legacy motors are not supported there yet — that waits on M0-L in the roadmap.

Do I need an ESP32 / ESPHome Bluetooth Proxy?

Only for range. Any Home Assistant Bluetooth adapter works if it's near the shades; ESP32 ESPHome Bluetooth Proxies (a few dollars each) extend coverage across a house.

Does it work with the Tilt app still installed?

Installed, yes; connected at the same time, no. A shade accepts one central at a time, so a phone with the app open in the same room will make Home Assistant's connections fail in a way that looks exactly like a range problem. Force-quit the app when handing control over. (Tilt shades do report real position, so the two won't disagree about state the way legacy motors would — they just can't share the radio link.)

Credits

• dnschneid/pysmartblinds — the original reverse engineering (Apache-2.0); this is a modern async port. See NOTICE.
• ianlevesque/smartblinds-client and docBliny/ha-mysmartblinds — the cloud client and (cloud-based) HA integration this borrows the key-export idea from.
• Sunrise-Labs-Dot-AI/tilt-local-bridge — reverse engineered the encrypted Tilt roller-shade protocol, which packet captures alone could not yield. Its codec is vendored here byte-for-byte (MIT); this repo adds an async bleak transport, proxy routing, and a test harness.
• LennP/ha-motionblinds_ble — the template for the Home Assistant integration layer.

Keywords

MySmartBlinds · Tilt · Tilt SmartHome · SmarterHome · Hall Labs · smart blinds · motorized blinds · local control · no cloud · no hub · cloud shutdown · discontinued · Home Assistant · HACS · Bluetooth · BLE · bleak · ESP32 · ESPHome · Bluetooth Proxy · retire the hub · keep working after cloud shutdown

License

Apache-2.0.