Tilt My Blinds – 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.

One of the biggest hurdles that home automation faces is the cost and complexity of installing devices for every small or mundane aspect of a house.

Tilt My Blinds thinks that smart blinds are a great addition to any home, and wants to make the process simple for anyone. Working with virtually any kind of existing blinds, Tilt My Blinds is a simple device that takes less than 15 minutes to install on each set of blinds and allows for scheduled opening and closing of the blinds as well as control via Bluetooth devices or wireless switches. The blinds are powered by a battery which can be charged using any USB outlet or with an optional solar panel to save even more time and energy. It’s going to take $50,000 to make a properly-funded endeavor. A Tilt My Blinds retrofit kit will cost backers $75 and arrive in February 2015.

For those automating their home piece by piece, Tilt My Blinds is a great way to add some futurism into even the most quaint of dwellings. The solar panel is great for taking even more effort away from managing the blinds, and the TV plug add-on to reduce viewing glare demonstrates the kind of foresight that should make this product successful.