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Join Dustin as he installs motorized outdoor shades from Kincmo onto the pergola of his outdoor hanging bed. | Research further here: https://www.kincmo.com/collections/outdoor-shades/products/kincmo-motorized-outdoor-shades-0-1-3-5-openness
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Table of Contents:
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0:00 - Intro
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0:00
A couple of years ago, my wife and I were at a spa and we were on one of these hanging beds that
0:16
they had there. And my wife said, Oh, I'd love to have one of those. I looked at it and said
0:21
Hey, I can build one of those. And she laughed at me thinking I was joking. I wasn't. So we took
0:25
pictures of the design and I came home and I replicated it. It's been a fantastic place to
0:31
hang out after using the sauna or for me taking a nap on a nice day. I originally built it wide
0:39
open but about a year and a half ago I closed it in at the back because we had added a cold plunge
0:44
and I wanted to situate that in the back of it. But I've been kicking around the idea for a few
0:49
years of actually having the ability to close it in somewhat. And so I actually enclose it in
0:56
plastic in the winter, trying to keep whatever's inside of here out of the elements, but also with
1:00
the idea of maybe we'll be able to use it during the winter. Most of the time here in Canada
1:04
it's way too cold for that. So we use it just a few days out of the winter, bundled under a lot
1:09
of blankets. But I've been exploring the idea of doing some outdoor blinds onto it to just give
1:16
some flexibility even in the nicer weather. And so today is the day and I have in front of me
1:22
blinds that I have ordered from Kinkmo that are motorized outdoor shades. We're going to do the
1:28
install and I'll give you a time lapse of the actual process in case you're considering closing
1:33
in a pergola yourself or using in some other kind of porch area doing some outdoor motorized shades
1:40
And then we'll take a closer look after they're installed, hopefully without issues, and then see what the quality is like, what the functionality is like, and I'll give you an
1:47
evaluation of the whole process after using them for a few days. So fingers crossed, let's dive in
1:53
Let's get these things installed. Thank you
2:43
All right, all of the blinds are up, and I got them installed last weekend
2:51
I've used them a little bit over the weekend, and I made some of my final tweaks
2:55
just to kind of evaluate the installation to make sure I had it exactly the way that I wanted it
3:00
So now I can give you kind of a follow-up on that. As far as the actual installation process, instructions are about average
3:07
They didn't stand out as being particularly fantastic and neither were they overly difficult to use
3:13
It was a fairly straightforward installation process. Really the only challenge is, as you may have noticed in the time lapse
3:19
I was trying to install blinds up to 115 inches long which is the maximum that you can order for these exterior shades which by the way in their marketing they show covering a span of I don
3:32
know, it looks like 25 feet or something like that, or 20 feet. You can't get them that big
3:38
And so this opening here is basically the maximum that you're at. 115 inches is what I was able to
3:43
order. And so obviously trying to hold that up to click it into place by myself was a bit of a
3:49
challenge so I kind of ended up cheating a bit by using a ladder to support one end while I locked
3:54
in one side then moved over to lock in the other side and then worked in the middle after that
3:58
and and so obviously the best case scenario is to not try to install those by yourself be smarter
4:04
than what I was and other than that not a big deal so one final thing that I needed to do is because
4:09
of this particular installation I put in the guides to help with wind and to keep everything
4:15
stable as it goes up and down. I had to, because I'm on concrete, I didn't want to actually put
4:19
tap cons into my concrete here. And so I actually mounted the bottom anchors at, uh, to the side of
4:26
my post as low down as possible. So because I was up just a little bit higher than what I would have
4:31
been if they were on the ground, I needed to, uh, to reset the lower limit of where it kind of like
4:37
natally goes down to and so in this case what I I had to go back to their website unfortunately
4:45
they do have pretty easy instructions that teach you how to reprogram these and so you can you know
4:51
define either their lower or their upper limit if you need to tweak that in this case for me it was
4:56
just the lower limit that I really needed to tweak but I was able to in just a few minutes to
5:00
reprogram that and so now as you can see it is going to stop at the exact place that i want to
5:08
where it's not creating any kind of wrinkling it's not going down too far and so that was a nice easy
5:14
tweak i was able to make now they do have a few different remote options i elected to go with the
5:19
model that is a wall mounted however when i say wall mounted it doesn't mean as you can see it's
5:24
easy to take it off it just attaches via magnets into its holder you can see one of them behind me
5:30
I installed one inside, I installed one outside. You can pop that off if you want to go around to it
5:35
You can go through and you can either control the blinds individually, if you've got multiple blind configuration, as I've got here
5:41
or you can control them all together as a group. Pretty straightforward and easy to use on that front
5:47
Now, one of the other motor choices, actually a couple of motor choices, you can just get a standard motor that's going to be controlled by the remote control
5:53
as I've been demonstrating. You also have the option, if you're wanting to go with a more integrated setup
5:57
you can either get a motor with a built-in with a Matter Hub also, or you can get it with a Matter
6:05
over thread motor. And so that will allow you to integrate with things like Alexa, Google Home
6:11
Apple Home, things like that. And so that you can just go into your, for example, for me
6:16
it's Google Home app, and you can control the blinds from within your phone, or you can set
6:22
up automated systems if you want the blinds to you know kind of correspond with sun up sun down
6:28
etc etc you can control all of that through that so just one other layer of flexibility that you
6:33
can build into the system if you want to do a more integrated and you're maybe a little bit tech savvy
6:38
and can figure out how to set all that up so how about the motor performance now i opted to get the optional solar panels they fairly inexpensive and so it just means you don have to to worry about any other charging configuration although you do have to deal with the potential unsightliness of having that little solar panel
6:56
In this case, because they don't actually require a lot of sun, I just mounted them along the tops of these
7:02
I first had them up on the wood, sided against that, and so I moved them down to this to where they'll get a little bit of sunlight during the day
7:08
but frankly, they don't need a whole lot. truth of matter is is that these blinds they don't use a lot of energy going up and down and you could
7:16
just hook up a usb power source it's a usb c port that's on the motor itself charge it a few times
7:22
a year and probably be fine unless you have some kind of like crazy extreme usage but beyond that
7:28
the actual motor itself i'm going to switch to this one here the motor itself is quiet and smooth
7:35
you know frankly I've used a number of motorized blinds and so far I've been pretty impressed with
7:40
the overall performance of them in general and so as you can see it doesn't like fly up and down
7:47
but it moves nice and smooth it's very very quiet in operation see if you can pick up any sound here
7:53
you might have heard just a little bit of sound there through my microphone but
7:58
frankly it is very very quiet it moves up and down smoothly as you might have seen there it has
8:04
a nice kind of deceleration that gets towards its end point. And so, I mean, there's nothing
8:10
really to complain about. It's a pretty straightforward process. And particularly once I've reprogrammed
8:16
it to the height and the lower travel limits that I want, it moves kind of perfectly through what I
8:22
want it to do. I actually found it to be very nice. I took my first nap in here since putting those on
8:28
The weather right now, it's May 2026, and the weather has been all over the place and mostly
8:33
very cool. It wasn't bad when I came out. The sun was shining, but because the wind was blowing a
8:38
little bit, I put up a couple of sides and left just this side open, which is away from the
8:42
direction of the wind. Well, when I woke up, a storm had blown in, rain was pounding down. And
8:49
as soon as I started to put up that upside, rain started blowing into the area where I was. And so
8:54
I was really delighted at how well it kept the weather out. And so anyway, so I'm pretty happy
9:00
on that aspect of performance. All right, so let's talk about the actual blind material themselves
9:05
I actually ended up going with the 5% white gray. And so 5% is the highest level of transparency
9:11
You also have a 3% and a 0% option. I decided that in this case, I actually have a fair amount
9:17
of privacy already baked in. And also I live in Canada. And so it's not like the sun is extremely
9:23
intense here. And so I decided that I would go with something that gives me a little bit more
9:27
transparency. It actually is quite private from the outside, but it gives you a decent amount of
9:32
visibility from the inside. And so I'm happy with the choice that I made there. One of the things I
9:37
was concerned about, again, because I live in Canada, was is these kind of motor configurations
9:43
is this whole setup going to survive a Canadian winter? And so the report that I got back is that
9:48
the operating temperature of the motor is all the way down to minus 25 Celsius. And so that means
9:54
that it's going to cover, in winter it's going to cover probably 98% of my winter days. We do get
10:01
some days that are below minus 25, but for the most part it's going to be fine there. And it's
10:06
good for up to plus 60 degrees Celsius And so it able to survive the hottest of climates So all of that was pretty good That was reassuring in and of itself This fabric is a 400 gram per meter squared
10:19
And so it's a pretty heavy material. Color fastness on this in terms of how well it's going to stand up to UV damage and fading
10:27
It is an 8 grade, which is the highest of the scale
10:31
And so it means it indicates exceptional resistance to fading and color change in sunlight
10:38
According to my research, the fabric thickness here is 0.57 millimeters. And so it's not thick
10:45
However, you can feel that it is tough and durable. And in fact, it has a breaking strength of between 1090 and 1040 newtons per five centimeters
10:54
And so just to give you again, a sense of what those numbers mean, there are three levels of basically fabric toughness in terms of the breaking strength
11:02
And so this is the third of the fourth levels. And so it is considered high strength
11:07
It's at the low end of the high strength spectrum, and so it should be nice and tough
11:13
resistant to tearing and damage in that kind of sense. Now, we'll see how well it holds up over the long haul, but certainly in terms of the stats
11:22
out of the box, it seems encouraging. So what's my conclusion? Well, on Amazon, the lowest rating I saw was a 4.8 out of 5, and these outdoor motorized
11:34
shades are five out of five in terms of their rating. I've bought a lot of quality blinds locally
11:40
for our house, and what I have found is that when I look at the price comparison of what you can get
11:47
on Amazon, basically these are running cheaper, even though they have a little bit more
11:53
features involved as far as, as I've mentioned, the integration with your kind of automated home
11:59
setup. And so there's some extra layers of kind of tech savviness built into these Kinkmo blinds
12:05
that wasn't necessarily there in the blinds that I bought locally. And so I think that overall
12:11
this is a competitive price for it. Now, at the same time, I don't want to oversell that because
12:16
for an installation like this with large motorized blinds covering all of this, we're looking at
12:22
something in the $2,500 range. And so it's a significant investment for something like that
12:28
at the same time however as far as the functionality so far this has worked exactly the way that i
12:33
hoped that it would and the installation process was straightforward the blinds seem to be well
12:39
made the motors are operating in a smooth fashion now it's really a wait and see kind of game to see
12:46
how they hold up in the harsh weather conditions that i happen to live in and so hopefully i'm just
12:53
as happy with them a few years down the road as I am right now. I can't use my time machine
12:59
however, and so for the moment, all I can say is that this is what I wanted to see happen for this
13:05
outdoor hanging bed, and so far, I'm delighted with the Kinkmo motorized blinds that I've
13:12
installed here, and hopefully, this little review will help to answer any questions if you have a
13:17
similar kind of configuration, and you're maybe hoping, kind of considering doing outdoor motorized
13:22
blinds, maybe this will help you out. Hope it has. As always, thanks for watching
13:27
Have a great day and let the light in