I’ve done it and it’s the best! Remote controls next to each set of windows plus voice control through google.

“Hey google, close the blinds” or my morning routine is “Hey google, good morning” which opens the blinds, plays the news headlines, weather and traffic for my morning commute.

It’s also possible to close them when sun sets and open during sunrise, but I don’t bother with that.

I haven’t had to replace any yet and have 12 zigbee temp/humidity sensors which are all battery operated.

You’re spot on. Home assistant and cloudless devices is the only way to build a smarthome, anything else will eventually stop working as cloud services are shutdown.

I made my own, they work flawlessly! Full local control via home assistant, or if they aren’t connected to wifi they start broadcasting their own network allowing me to connect with a phone or computer and access a webpage.

My prototype vs the finished product.

https://preview.redd.it/sc07oxu87fwb1.jpeg?width=2880&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c79d9e4c05356d27a4c3e43fcfb0d009120cfe7c

You might also need to add the additional fan speed options. My testing showed I was missing “diffuse” and “middle”. You can figure it out by seeing what the esp logs show when you set the fan speed of the remote to each level.

You could try doing the same with the horizontal vane, I haven’t tested that yet.

The D1 minis or any esp8266 based device will work, you just need to use a bidirectional logic level converter. The units communicate on 5v levels and all esp based devices use 3.3v levels. Some ESP devices might be more tolerant of using 5v on their GPIO pins but none of them really support it.