Desert Online General Trading LLC
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Desert Online General Trading LLC
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Product Description Turn your regular window shades into Smart Shades. Effortless to set up and operate with your smartphone. Save money on heating and cooling and create automated schedules for each room. You can wake up to the sun or slide your virtual windows on the app's screen and watch your curtains come to life. Smart Shades works with almost any type of roller shades or blinds and is easy to install without any professional help. From the Manufacturer Smart Shades Retrofits your existing shades With the Smart Shades you don’t have to replace your existing blinds and shades or call in an installer. The device fits the most of the beaded chain roller blinds. Never Worry About Recharging Smart Shades batteries can be recharged with solar panels or via special USB cable. One charge is enough for approximately one month. If you wish, you can leave the adapter connected to the solar panel and never worry about charging again Easy installation Easy to install and retrofits to your current shades Mobile app Control multiple windows from the mobile app. Set daily or weekly schedules to automate each room. Calendar Set daily triggers to move the blind whenever it is more convenient for you Safety is Our Priority We believe in our responsibility to protect our customers. Smart Shades helps to keep your loved ones from dangling cords. It helps to wind up excess cords out of your child's or pet's reach. 100% BPA, PVC, lead, and phthalate-free. About the Startup Describe your product in 3 words.Personal. Intelligent. SimpleHow did you come up with the idea for this product?The idea behind it was simple - we wanted to automate hard to reach window shades in our office. After getting the quote from the blind motorizing company we thought to ourselves - no way - and invented our own. We’ve made many friends along our journey, running a successful crowdfunding campaign, carefully listening to our first customer's feedback and are finally ready to release the Smart Shades for everyone!What makes your product special?The price and the simplicity.What has been the best part of your startup experience?The best experience by far has been the people coming up to us during demonstrations in the shows or contacting us by e-mail, telling us how long have they been waiting for a device like this. That gives us the encouragement that we are doing the right thing.The new knowledge and connections that we have made have also proven to be very interesting and eye-opening.
T**S
Too many flaws
- The system relies, in part, on a small magnet that is placed in the gear and allows the unit to count the number of rotations that have been completed. This magnet fell out almost immediately. Serious design flaw.- This company feels it is a good idea to publish the names and orders for its customers on its website, without any permission. An email demanding removal of my personal data remains unanswered after 10 days.- After installing, the system needs to be calibrated so it knows what are the top and bottom positions. This process wasn't documented at all (turns out that by 'up' they mean: keep the damn thing running until you feel you're pulling the drapes off the wall).- Integration with Amazon Alexa is vdone very badly. It works less than half the time. According to support, this is because Alexa confuses 'blinds' for 'lights'. But even when using a different command like "Alexa, ask Soma to close the bedroom" won't work at least half the time.I'm giving it two stars because in the end, the timed closing works well (so I'll know that the curtains will be shut by the time I go to sleep), as does operating the units through the mobile app. But in the grander picture, I wouldn't recommend buying this product in its current state.
A**R
Bad Product, Bad customer service
Soma Smart Shades I purchased with the high hopes of having my blinds automated. The package was small, convenient, and simple. Setup was pretty easy. The bad: 1) After installing my item, the unit would no raise and lower the blinds to the specific stored heights. After removal and reinstalling it on the app, the same issue. The blinds would only move to the proper top/down location 1 out of 5 times. The rest of the time, it would pull up too high, or lower way too much 2) After a week, the blinds would no longer raise as the motor was too weak, even at full 100% charge. The blinds were within spec of Soma's recommendation 4) The sprocket would fall off the motor after a few runs 4) After contacting customer service, they said I would be responsible for return shipping. It was about $40 to ship it back because they are located in Estonia, Europe.I really wanted this to work, but was extremely disappointed at the product.
P**R
DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT!
Bought three of these and a Connect in October 2018 and they worked okay for 3 months. They opened with Alexa and closed on schedule. They didn’t hold settings well so after a while they would close to an inch or so higher than my setting and the only way to fix it was to start all over again configuring them, but they generally functioned and we’re the cheapest option for automated shades I could find, so I lived with them until after the expiration of the 30 day trial period. After 3 months one of them stopped working and I’ve been in customer service hell ever since. Their customer service department is almost completely non-responsive. It takes them a week and multiple emails to respond to any communication, and then the response is to spend hours trying different pointless things, then to send multiple photos and answer multiple questions (all of which appears calculated to get you to just give up), and then finally, 2 months later, after I jumped through all their many hoops, they notified me that I could ship the unit back to them for inspection and possible replacement. That was a week and a half ago and they haven’t given me instructions or answered my follow up emails. Once I do ship it back to them I can only imagine how long it’s going to take to receive a new unit to replace the one I paid $150 for a few months ago! I suspect this is a couple of kids in a garage. I bought an Axis for another window. It was $100 more but is SO much better in every respect. BOY do I wish I had just sprung for the extra $300 & bought Axis for the first 3 windows. DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT. It is not worth the money and the customer service will make you jump off a bridge.
F**Z
Its still a "ongoing product", not a finished one. Has lot of needed points
At the moment this Product is not really good.There is no way at the moment to controll it on another way as bluetooth from your phone. The SOMA Connect Box is in progress, but i guess, that this will not be very good.The engine oft the SOMA Smart Shades is extremly loud. I created some triggers, so that in the evening the shade is turning down for watching TV. But then you are not able to listen the sound of the TV anymore!Also there is no way to connect SOMA with some other smart home devices, in Example with light sensors or weather sensor as well. That would be very useful to have.Connecting it with the app was very easy. In general there is a lot to optimize!
S**I
Negative 2 stars - do not buy!!
I had the same issues as everyone else. DO NOT BUYWorked ok for a bit and then lowers waaaaay too much or raises waaaaay too high.Support was terrible and slow and I felt like they just wanted to get me through the channels instead of fix the issue.In the end I demanded a refund and returned the piece of garbage.It's a product that is not ready to be sold yet. It still needs a lot a lot a lot of development mainly on the software side. SKIP IT
S**E
Ridicules!!!
I received the Soma product about 3 weeks ago and here are the problems:1) The motor creates too much noise.2) The device is not holding with the double side tape, after few pools it's jump off the wall.3) If your chain has a connector it will get stuck in the spool and the device will stop working.4) The battery life is way too short.DO NOT TOUCH this product it's not usable!This people needs to go back to the lab and work a much better product before selling it!
T**V
Worked for 6 months and then broked
I purchased the product and 6 month later it stopped working. I contacted costumer service who responded with a question to my concern and never replied back. Disappointed
M**M
I’d like to point out that it would be cool if ...
First off, I’d like to point out that it would be cool if I could use it with Amazon Alexa. I ordered the product just for to try it out as I planed to automate my home a bit and blinds seemed like an easy place to start. The product seemed so small that I was afraid the motor wouldn't be able to move my heavy blind. It struggled a bit during setup but ended up working quite well. It moves the heavier blind a little slower as I expected. I discovered that you can’t move the blind manually any more after installation. It isn’t noted anywhere, but as I mostly use schedules, I think it should be fine (will update the review after few months or so with new feedback) During setup I did have some problems but luckily Soma support guided me through the tricky bits. Overall, I’d say it is money well spent. If this one holds up well in few months then I might get more.