EZ Wand – Backerjack

With the Slide, home curtains slide into the 21st Century

At this point, many parts of the home can be retrofitted with connected components in order to bring them into the 21st century. The result? Dumb lamps that can be cloud controlled and front doors with the ability to track everyone who comes in and out of the home. Curtains, however, have been a bit of a challenge since they come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, forcing apartment dwellers and homeowners to buy brand new units to satisfy their connected needs.

The Slide is one of the few devices designed as a smart retrofit system for curtains and blinds. With it, users can use a companion smartphone app to control single or multiple curtains, adjust how far they should open and even set timers and schedules. IFTTT integration takes the Slide’s functionality up a notch, letting users take advantage of other aspiring smart home mainstays like the Flic and Amazon’s Echo.

EZ Wand has the magic touch to motorize blinds

One part of the home that has unceremoniously been ignored by smart home fever is the window blind. As such, automating them is an involved process that usually costs home owners lots of time and money to properly do. The EZ Wand makes the entire process as simple as replacing the wand on horizontal or vertical window blinds. When that’s done, the supplied remote control can control up to eight different wands either individually or in groups, making what used to be an annoyance as easy as a button press.

With the EZ Wand as easy to install as it is, it makes for a low-cost no-brainer for most home owners who are looking for this sort of thing. The 4 AAA required powers the wand for nine months while the remote for two years at a distance of up to 45 feet away, a fact that would make it pretty versatile were it not for its lack of color options. Unfortunately, the EZ Wand is limited in what kind of blinds it can control and doesn’t feature smartphone interaction. Other types of blinds can be outfitted with the ShutterEaze or Tilt My Blinds instead. In any case, $59 gets backers one wand and a remote, with an estimated delivery date of December 2014. The company behind the campaign is looking for $35,000 to make this product a reality.