Overview
AutoCurtain
Waking up at the same time every day is one of, if not the, most influential factors on your energy throughout the day. While automatic curtain raisers work greatly at waking you up more naturally than an alarm, products on the market often start at $300 and are not compatible with every curtain system.
That is why I built a $50, universal curtain raiser that can be coupled to nearly any curtain on the market. The full BOM is under $50: a $1 aluminum pipe, $5 lids, and a $20 12V DC gearmotor. Universality comes from the set screw shaft coupler, which clamps onto the curtain rod axle by tightening a set screw from the outside. It accepts any rod shaft under half an inch in diameter, which covers nearly every curtain system on the market.
Design
The main body is standard 3-inch aluminum tube stock, lightly sanded to a brushed finish. Using off-the-shelf pipe eliminated a turning operation and kept the cost down without sacrificing the look.
Fitting a gearmotor coaxially inside a 3-inch bore rules out spur-gear sidepacks. A planetary stage solves this: the ring, planet, and sun gears all share the motor axis, so the entire drivetrain fits within the tube diameter. The 5:1 reduction multiplies torque enough to drive a loaded curtain from a standstill without stalling the motor.
All structural parts were machined from aluminum on a Haas CNC VF2. Tight bore fits on the gearbox housing and the 1/2in shaft coupler keep runout negligible over a long run life.
| Motor | 12V DC brushed |
| Gearbox | 5:1 planetary |
| Main Body | Ø3.00″ OD × 4.93″ |
| Material | Aluminium, as machined |
| Shaft Coupler | Set screw type, accepts any rod up to ½″ diameter |
| BOM Cost | $50 |
| Controller | Arduino (timed relay) |
| Machined on | Haas CNC VF2 |
Running daily since March 2026.