Nice for Home Assistant

A Home Assistant Integration for the Nice TT6 control unit for tubular motors.

The Nice TT6 control unit is used to control projector screens, garage doors, awnings and blinds. It is white labelled by Screen Research as the MCS-N-12V-RS232 projector screen controller and by Beamax as the 11299 projector screen controller.

The control unit has an RS232 serial connection but is known to work with USB to serial converters.

Covers

The Integration allows for the control of multiple Covers. There can be one or many control units, each controlling one or many Covers.

The following Home Assistant entities are created for each Cover:

A cover entity that can be used to control each Cover
A sensor entity that represents the drop of the Cover

The Integration offers a service called nice.set_drop_percent which will set the drop percentage to greater precision than the standard cover.set_cover_position service.

Presets

The Integration offers a service called nice.apply_preset which will move any number of Covers to preset positions.

Projector Screen Control

The Integration was designed with projector screens in mind and offers some optional features for controlling multiple Covers in a Constant Image Width (CIW) configuration.

A Cover can optionally have an Image Area defined to represent the screen. Then, an optional helper called a "CIW Helper" can be defined which links a Cover that is a Screen and a Cover that is a Mask. The following sensor entities are created for each "CIW Helper":

Image Height
Image Width
Image Diagonal
Aspect Ratio

Sensors

The sensors all round their values to 2 decimal places. They also offer a state variable called full_precision_value that is not rounded.

Initial Configuration

Step 1: Add the Integration

Add the Integration to Home Assistant as follows:

Navigate to Configuration->Integrations
Click on Add Integration
Search for Nice
Click on the Nice integration to initiate the configuration flow

Step 2: Integration Definition

Enter the details of the Integration:

Field	Description
Title	The title of the integration

Click Submit to move to the next step.

Step 3: Create Controller(s)

Enter a name for the controller and the serial port.

Examples of valid serial port definitions are:

/dev/ttyUSB0 (Linux)
COM3 (Windows)
socket://192.168.0.100:50000 (if you are using a TCP/IP to serial converter)

If there is another controller to be added then check the box "Add Another Controller?"

Click Submit to move to the next step or create another controller as appropriate. Note that the Integration will validate the controller at this point by trying to connect to it.

Step 4a: Create Cover

Enter the following details:

Field	Description
Cover Name	Name of the Cover
Controller	The Controller Select from a drop down list
Device Address	The TTBus address of the device Get this from your vendor documentation - as an example, the projector screen might be device 2 and the mask might be device 3
Device Node	The TTBus node of the device Again, get this from the documentation - usually 4
Drop	The maximum drop of the Cover in the unit system specified in the Integration definition
Image Area	Check this box if the Cover is a screen If the Cover has an Image Area then additional details will be collected in the next step

Click on Submit to move to the next step.

Step 4b: Define Image Area

If the Cover has an Image Area then enter the following details:

Field	Description
Border Below	Height of the border below the image in the unit system specified in the Integration definition
Height	The height of the Image Area in the unit system specified in the Integration definition
Aspect Ratio	The Aspect Ratio

Height plus the Border Below cannot be larger than the maximum drop defined in the previous step.

Click on Submit to move to the next step.

Step 5: Finish Cover

If there is another Cover to be created then check "Add Another Cover?"

Click on Submit to either create another Cover or finish the configuration.

Options

Options Menu

Navigate to Configuration->Integrations, locate the Nice Integration and click on "Configure". The following options can be seleced from the "Choose Action" screen.

Option	Description
Add CIW Helper	Add a CIW Helper This option is shown if there is at least one Cover with an Image Area (a Screen) and one without (a Mask).
Del CIW Helper	Delete a CIW Helper This option is only shown if any CIW Helpers exist.
Add Preset	Add a Preset
Del Preset	Delete a Preset This option is only shown if any Presets exist.

Select an option and click on Submit to move to the next step.

Adding a CIW Helper

Enter the following details and then click on Submit to create the CIW Helper.

Field	Description
Name	A friendly name for the Object
Screen	Name of the screen Only Covers with an Image Area can be selected
Mask	Name of the mask Only covers without an image Area can be selected

Deleting CIW Helpers

Select the CIW Helper(s) to be deleted. Click on Submit to delete them.

Adding a Preset

Give the Preset a name and select the list of Covers to be moved. Click Submit to define the drop for each Cover in turn.

Deleting Presets

Select the Preset(s) to be deleted. Click on Submit to delete them.

Services

nice.apply_preset

Takes the name of the Preset as the argument

nice.set_drop_percent

Takes a Cover entity and the percentage drop as parameters. This service will set the drop to an accuracy of up to 0.1% as opposed to the cover.set_current_position service which uses an int to specify the position.

nice.send_simple_command

Takes a Cover entity and the command name as parameters.

Valid commands are as follows.

"options": {
    "stop": "Stop",
    "move_down": "Move down",
    "move_up": "Move up",
    "move_pos_1": "Move to built-in preset 1",
    "move_pos_2": "Move to built-in preset 2",
    "move_pos_3": "Move to built-in preset 3",
    "move_pos_4": "Move to built-in preset 4",
    "move_pos_5": "Move to built-in preset 5",
    "move_pos_6": "Move to built-in preset 6",
    "move_up_step": "Move up a step",
    "move_down_step": "Move down a step",
    "store_pos_1": "Store current position in built-in preset 1",
    "store_pos_2": "Store current position in built-in preset 2",
    "store_pos_3": "Store current position in built-in preset 3",
    "store_pos_4": "Store current position in built-in preset 4",
    "store_pos_5": "Store current position in built-in preset 5",
    "store_pos_6": "Store current position in built-in preset 6",
    "del_pos_1": "Delete built-in preset 1",
    "del_pos_2": "Delete built-in preset 2",
    "del_pos_3": "Delete built-in preset 3",
    "del_pos_4": "Delete built-in preset 4",
    "del_pos_5": "Delete built-in preset 5",
    "del_pos_6": "Delete built-in preset 6"
}

Emulator

If you would like to experiment with this integration then you can run an emulator of the Nice TT6 controller.

Set it up as follows:

python -m venv nice_venv
source nice_venv/bin/activate
pip install nicett6_pp81381

Run it as follows:

source nice_venv/bin/activate
python -m nicett6.emulator

Use it by configuring a Controller with a serial port like socket://localhost:50200

pp81381/nice