The new mechanism works just fine. I may play around with the pulley size in order to increase the speed. I have got a big chunk of the program working but its definitely not polished, I need to add some error checking and things to ensure that the blind always knows the current position, I used the endstop cover example from esphome but I may try out the other ones such as the time based one but for now, I will try to implement some manual control buttons for easy control of the blinds without having to open the app or if my pc is turned off. 

Here you can see the current setup I'm using to test the blinds. On the breadboard is an ESP32 dev board, a reed switch module with sensitivity control, and the TMC2208 driver. The stepper is connected via long wires

I have also done a successful test of the POE board and I have got it to appear in the ESPHome UI, In order to move my software to this poe board ill just need to change some pins since they are being used by the onboard ethernet and remove the wifi stuff. It was surprisingly easy.

I have also started the schematic for the PCB, when that is completed then I'll be able to design the rest of the enclosure around the PCB since I'm not sure how big it will be. Since the stepper needs 12V I'll have to make a custom board because the POE board I bought doesn't have any other voltages present, only 3.3V for the esp32, and plus it has extra stuff on the board which just takes up space such as the SD card slot and USB C.