VerhoBot - The small robot that controls your curtain

The Tiny Bot That Opens and Closes Your Curtains for You Sleep in darkness. Wake up with sunlight.

Overview

Have you ever tried to sleep during the Finnish summer? You know the problem. The sun barely sets, the nights stay bright, and when you finally manage to fall asleep, your room starts filling with sunlight long before you're ready to wake up.Then, when morning actually arrives, your blackout curtains are doing their job a little too well. VerhoBot solves both problems.

I took this challenge to solve and share it in my spare time from end to end (from design concept, prototype, real product looking robot with its official firmware web flasher, open source code and build steps).

VerhoBot is a compact curtain-moving robot designed to automatically close your curtains when you need darkness and open them again when it is time to wake up. The goal is simple: improve sleep quality while letting natural sunlight become part of your morning routine. Built around the ESP32 platform, VerhoBot aims to be affordable, repairable, open-source, and easy to integrate into modern smart homes.

Features

Current Goals

Automatic curtain opening and closing

• Compact rail-mounted design
• Battery-powered operation
• ESP32-based controller
• Quiet operation
• USB-C charging
• Low-power sleep modes
• Open-source hardware and software

Planned Features

• Scheduled curtain control
• Sunrise and sunset automation
• Home Assistant integration
• Mobile configuration
• OTA firmware updates
• Battery monitoring
• Manual override controls
• Position calibration
• Smart alarm mode

Why?

Finland's summer is famous for its bright nights.While blackout curtains help create a dark sleeping environment, they also block the morning sunlight that helps regulate the body's natural wake-up cycle.

VerhoBot combines the best of both worlds:

• Darkness when you need sleep
• Sunlight when it is time to wake up
• No alarms.
• No bright phone screens.
• Just natural light at the right moment.

BUT really why?

This project is really for makers to makers not a necessarily a big innovation and unique idea. If you can afford Smart curtain robot in the market, do that and ignore this project. This open-source project is an ambitious one!. Making every step and build as a challenge and learn from each phases success and failure. Over engineering things so that beginners learn "the advanced" stuff. Loving the process instead of the searching for the binary end result (completed or failed) :). Build a muscle by building, you know what hackers do ? they build it, if they can't buy it...enjoy the ride!

Hardware

Planned Electronic

Mechanical Design

• Compact form factor
• Rail-mounted operation
• Existing curtain compatibility
• 3D-printable enclosure
• Modular internal architecture

Parts required

Software Road-map

Phase 1

• Basic motor control [Done]
• Position calibration [Done]
• Manual open/close control [Done]

Phase 2

• Scheduling system [Done]
• Battery monitoring [Done]
• Configuration interface [Done]

Phase 3

• OTA updates [Done]
• Web-based firmware flasher (Done)
• Home Assistant integration [Pending...for Version 2]
• Smart automation features [Pending... for Version 2]

Project Status

v_0.1.0-beta1.2  -> Firmware complete
v_0.1.0-beta1.1  -> Testing and tuning
v_0.1.0-beta1  ->   Manual open/close control
v1.0  -> Stable release
v1.1  -> Stable with Improved dashboard
V1.2  -> OTA feature added
V1.2.1 -> Fixed a boot button deep sleep wake to GPIO1 as esp32-c3 does not support this

Active development is ongoing here...

Design Principles

VerhoBot follows a few simple rules:

• Open-source first
• Repairable hardware
• Affordable components
• Low power consumption
• Easy to build
• Easy to modify
• No vendor lock-in (you own everything)

Contributing

Contributions, ideas, testing feedback, and hardware improvements are welcome.As the project evolves, documentation, CAD files, schematics, and firmware source code will be published in this repository.

Built for the Finnish summer. Makers for Makers