Your roller shutter drive: manual, electric or solar-powered

A manual roller shutter drive is any drive that has to be operated mechanically by hand. This means that you basically open and close the roller shutters with pure muscle power. This has the advantage that you do not have to rely on electricity to control the roller shutters, and you do not have to worry about complicated electrical connections.

Mechanical roller shutter drives include belt winders and cranks, both of which you can configure in our roller shutter shop. Belt operation is still the most common. A distinction is made between flush-mounted belt winders and surface-mounted belt winders. But that primarily affects the visual appearance; the functional principle is the same for both. When the roller shutter is closed, the belt is unrolled from the belt winder with the help of a spiral spring and is simply rolled up again when opened.

When operating with a connecting rod, the force used is transferred to a so-called crank gear in the roller shutter box. This allows you to manually control larger and correspondingly heavy roller shutters with a crank. Compared to the roller shutter belt winder, only a small opening in the wall is required, which means that the thermal insulation is better.

Nevertheless, large roller shutters can be attached to double windows or patio doors, but due to their heavy weight, they are difficult to move with manual operation. Not only children and the physically handicapped have problems with them. One solution can be the installation of an electric belt winder, but it makes more sense to have an electric roller shutter drive, which can also be retrofitted in case of doubt.

Electric roller shutters provide significantly more comfort, because all you have to do is press a button and the roller shutters move all by themselves. For this purpose, a tube motor with sufficient traction is installed in the shaft to easily wind up and unwind the roller shutter. It is controlled either by a switch on the wall or by a shutter remote control - this depends, among other things, on whether the motor is wired or has an integrated radio receiver.

In the configurator you can choose between two roller shutter motors with a classic power connection

The Somfy Ilmo and the Somfy Oximo.

The Ilmo is a wired roller shutter drive that is immediately ready for use without complex presetting. It also has electronic torque monitoring, which ensures that the end positions are automatically recognized and corrected should they become misaligned.

The Oximo, on the other hand, is a wireless roller shutter motor that you can control either with a wall transmitter or remote control as desired. The Oximo tube motor uses the IO-Homecontrol system as radio protocol, which means you can use it together with a smart home roller shutter control such as the TaHoma Premium, which even allows you to control your roller shutters automatically.

With the help of a wind or sun sensor, for example, they automatically react to changes in the weather. Or you can simply use the control centre as a practical roller shutter timer.

Thanks to the integrated obstacle detection system and freeze protection, perfect operation is also guaranteed with this model. If there are objects in the way or if the roller shutter is frozen, the electric tube motor stops automatically to prevent damage.

If you would like to make your new roller shutters particularly ready for the future, you should opt for our solar-powered roller shutter motors. Clean and renewable energy is becoming increasingly important, and with a solar roller shutter drive you get your power completely free of charge.

Installation is also a lot easier, since no additional cables or sockets are required and the outer wall remains intact. Solar-powered tube motors are basically DC motors.

Normal roller shutter motors use 230 volts of alternating current, while the batteries installed in solar motors deliver a voltage of 12 or 24 volts. This is also the reason for the higher cost of solar roller shutter drives: high-quality batteries and solar cells quickly drive up the costs. But keep in mind that these are one-off acquisition costs!

You already save the cost of having to hire an electrician when installing the roller shutter, and later the cost of having the shutters permanently hooked up to electricity.

In addition to the battery, which guarantees unrestricted operation of your electric roller shutters even on cloudy days, the quality of the solar panel is particularly important. Our solar-powered motors are equipped with highly sensitive solar cells that function and store energy even when direct sunlight is not available. Overall, it is better not to use solar-powered motors on windows that have many trees in front of them. The occasional shade or cloudy sky is usually not a problem.

Due to the wireless installation, you can only control the solar roller shutter motor via radio, i.e. using a remote control. For this purpose, Somfy uses the radio protocol RTS (Radio Technology Somfy), with which you can also integrate your roller shutters into your smart home.