E-Rod motor adapter plate w/ cog and rack mounting brackets

This E-Rod motorized curtain rod was purchased from Lowes when they were running a sale for around $70. I originally purchased it not to close my curtains, but instead to close my sliding window in the middle of the night. You see, I live next to the ocean, and enjoy falling asleep to the sound of the waves crashing on the shore, and the ocean breeze. However, in the early morning, when birds start chirping and people start getting ready for work, the associated noises wake me up. So this will close the window in the middle of the night while i sleep, to keep noise to a minimum.

The original E-Rod came with a noisy gear reduction motor, so I found a relatively cheap, and quiet, windshield wiper motor on eBay for around $30, and began work on making an adapter plate to mount the motor to the E-Rod. The wiper motor is a 91-97 Toyota Previa rear wiper motor. What I came up with is what you see here, it works smoothly and is much much quieter.

The downside is that the original motor controller's current sensing circuitry cannot handle the extra load this larger motor, and thusly, must be modified to handle the load. Mechanically, however, this works great, and in the following weeks I will be modifying the circuitry to handle the extra load.

Included in this "thing" is some mounting brackets I made to mount the rack to my wall. I could not use the ones included with the kit, because I have brick walls and window casings, and had to use the existing holes that were here when I moved in. Therefore, I made these brackets to locate the rod perfectly using the existing holes.