Motorization, and what it has to talk to.

When motorization earns its cost

Reach, count, and whether anyone will actually operate the shade decide this — not the size of the budget.

Three conditions make motorization the right answer rather than a luxury. The first is reach: glass above about ten feet, or behind furniture, or on an atrium wall, cannot be operated by hand, so a manual shade there is a shade that stays where it was left.

The second is count. Past a certain number of openings on a facade, keeping them aligned by hand stops happening, and a facade of shades at nine different heights undoes the architecture.

The third is intent. If the shade is part of a daylighting or energy strategy — if it has to respond to the sun rather than to a person noticing glare — it has to be automated, because the strategy depends on it moving when nobody asks.

AC power

Line voltage to each motor. The commercial default for large shades and high cycle counts.

DC power

Low-voltage distribution from a central supply. Quieter, smaller motors, simpler low-voltage runs.

Battery

No power run to the opening at all. Suits retrofit and residential work where opening the wall is the expensive part.

The three control layers

Local switch, group control, and building integration. Most projects need at least two, and the mistake is designing for only one.

The first layer is local: a keypad or switch at the opening that raises, lowers and stops the shade in front of you. Occupants need this even in a fully automated building — a system that cannot be overridden by the person sitting under it generates complaints, not comfort.

The second is group: one command driving a facade, a floor or a zone, so the elevation stays aligned and a room can be set in one action.

The third is integration: the shades taking instruction from something else — a timeclock, a sun-tracking algorithm, a weather sensor, a lighting control system, or a building management system. This is where the SmartMove® Digital Network sits, and it is the layer that has to be decided early because it determines the wiring.

Integrating with third-party systems

The shades usually have to answer to a control system somebody else specified. That is a coordination problem, and it is solvable if it is raised early enough.

On most commercial projects the lighting or building control system is specified independently of the shades, and the shades are expected to join it. IWS systems are built to be driven by third-party controllers regardless of brand or technology, which turns the question from whether it can integrate into who is responsible for what.

That coordination is easiest to settle at the drawing stage: what speaks to what, what voltage runs where, who supplies the interface, and who commissions the result. Left until the shades arrive on site, it becomes a change order.

Where a project has standardised on Lutron®, the shades can be driven from Sivoia® QS. The Lutron link on the products page goes to their documentation for that system.

What we need to draw it

Electrical drawings take two weeks after receipt of order. What determines whether that fortnight is enough is what arrives with the order.

To produce a motor and control layout we need the shade schedule with sizes and quantities, the reflected ceiling plan, the pocket and closure details, and the control intent — what should be grouped, what should be automated, and what the shades have to talk to.

With those in hand the layout resolves in the published two weeks. Without the control intent in particular, the drawing stalls, because motor placement and power distribution follow from how the system is meant to behave.

Electrical work itself is never included in an IWS order. We produce the drawings; the electrical contractor builds from them.