SwitchBot Curtain (Rod Pole) - White

No, me neither, but I'm a sucker for home automation, so I was itching to test a fabulous gadget called a Switchbot that professes to take away this tiresome task.

Switchbot set out as a popular kick-starter project with a focus on turning a home into a smart home without having to replace all the hardware you already own. One of its key products is a little device that can flick switches and push buttons, and I've yet to have a play with one of those, but I felt drawn, if you'll excuse the expression, to their curtain device.

It's basically a motorized "bot" that attaches to a variety of different curtain rails and uses a motor to propel the drapes along the rail, saving you having to do it yourself.

But within a few minutes of getting them out of the box, I'd set each bot up and clipped it to my U-rail. And they work brilliantly.

The process of attaching them takes no time at all, it's just a clip-on system. Linking it to my phone took a few attempts, but it worked quickly, and then setting up the module and smart speaker was a fairly quick process too.

There's a bit more work to do in "calibrating" the bots, to tell them how far to run to close the curtains properly, and telling them when to stop as they pull them open, but the app is great, and makes it all very simple.

The nice people at Switchbot also sent me some solar panels to hook up to the bots, which keep the batteries topped up. These can either clip onto the bots themselves or, if the window is too far below the curtains, they can be stuck onto the curtain.

Sticky tape and velcro, it turns out, isn't the best way to do this. And that's the only option you have. I've yet to engineer a better solution, but I'm working on it.

The app, incidentally, will let you create schedules. So, for example, you can time your curtains to open when your alarm is due to go off. Use this option with caution though, in case your wife decides to get up early for a run and the bots inadvertently almost reveal all to the neighbours while she's changing into her sportswear.