MOTORYSE Smart Shade & Curtain driver for Control4

Where this came from: this question was asked on r/Control4 — not here. We answered it there, in public, and this is that answer.

I haven't put a MOTORYSE driver in a live project, so I can't tell you how theirs behaves specifically. But the thing to chase isn't the driver, it's what the driver is talking to. Ask whoever wrote it three questions: does the hub take IP commands or is it RF-only, do the shades report real position back or is the driver timing a run and guessing at a percentage, and how many shades is one hub actually rated for versus how many it claims.

Position feedback is the one I'd refuse to give up. A driver that only sends open/close/stop and estimates the rest looks fine for a week, then someone hits the hardware button or the shade loses power, and now your Control4 slider says 40 percent while the fabric is at the top. Every scene after that is wrong and you can't fix it in programming. Two-way position also means the shade icon on the touchscreen is telling the truth, which is most of what people are actually paying for.

One cheap thing you can do before spending money: a .c4z is a zip file. Copy it, rename the extension to .zip, open it and read driver.xml. You can see which proxy it binds to and what commands and notifications are declared. That'll tell you in two minutes whether you're getting real level reporting or open/close with a stopwatch, and it beats anything on the datasheet. Also check the last-updated date on the driver and whether the author is still shipping updates, because OS updates are what break third-party drivers and an abandoned driver is one you'll be replacing.

None of this is a pitch for Lutron. Lutron shades cost a multiple of what these do, and if you have ten or twelve openings the math isn't close. I sell Lutron and I still say that out loud. What the money buys you there is that feedback and scene sync are correct every single time and there's someone to call. If you can get honest feedback out of cheaper hardware, buy the cheaper hardware.

If it's useful, send me the .c4z along with your controller model and OS version and I'll open it and tell you what it actually supports before you commit. No charge and I don't need your project file for that.

For disclosure: I'm a Control4 and Lutron dealer, Lutron since 1999, and remote Control4 and Lutron work is what I do for a living.