Advance window blind control pheasability/parts

Projects General Guidance
1

So to start off I'm completely new to micro controllers/programming/electronics. I do have a Mechanical engineering degree and have done some work while in school with programming, and a few basic exercises with micro controllers but have since forgotten it all, will be a long process for me to re-learn everything to try this out.

What I'm hoping to accomplish is to have a controller open/close window blinds based on a set of criteria, the blinds are the basic horizontal slat type, and would connect the motor to the wand to control the tilt of the slats.

The criteria I would like to accomplish would utilize a light sensor, temperature sensor, and IR sensor. I haven't completely decided as I'm not sure what is possible/not too expensive to accomplish.

I would like to open/close the blinds to balance aesthetics and temperature:
if the window is not in direct sunlight (cloudy or shadowed) blinds open
if the window is in direct sunlight and the indoor temp is hot, close blinds, if cool, open blinds
i would also like the option to override the temp control to open/close the blinds through an IR control by using say a TV remote as there is quite a bit of glare on the TV during some times of the day.
At night (no light) I would like the blinds to close for privacy.

also there is the challenge of controlling the blind position, using timers to control the motors is generally very inaccurate so would likely need something like an encoder to track the position. I may also like to add a humidity sensor in order to perform a heat-index calculation to control the blinds based on heat index instead of just temperature.

is this achievable? also what components would people recommend using? I have found some simple examples of people doing similar things, primarily opening blinds during day and closing at night for privacy/plant growth.

in future I'm also thinking of looking at a window controller to open/close windows (possibly also control air conditioning) based on similar criteria as comparing heat-index inside/outside and opening/closing windows to achieve desired results. along with some over-rides, maybe a wind sensor to close windows in high winds, rain sensor to close windows when rain is detected, etc.

2

The sort of blinds you're describing don't sound as if they will require much torque to tilt the slats. You can probably use a geared DC motor to operate them. There are some very small, low power and inexpensive DC motors with integral metal epicyclic gearboxes which would be ideal for this. It would be sensible to fit a quadrature encoder on the output shaft to give you positive feedback, but for prototyping purposes you will probably find you can get away with a simple timed approach. I built a similar project based on a Pololu Baby Orangutan Arduino and micro motor/gearbox, controlled by an LDR, powered by a 1A wall wart. All the components are tiny and you don't need to deal with a lot of heat so the overall project can be very compact.

3

A long time back I made a simple blind slat tilting setup (below) that just used a servo and some kitchen drawer stuff to operate the slats. It actually worked pretty good, and was interesting to watch the pan/tilt cam turn to the window while people cycled the slats open and closed.

http://web.comporium.net/~shb/blindtilt.htm