12-Pack of Merkury Innovations Smart Wi-Fi LED Strip (9.8') for $36 on Meh

Hardware
1

https://meh.com/ has 12 packs of Merkury (Tuya) LED strips. ~$0.30 per foot if you’re interested.
Is Tuya reliable these days? I tried to get a Feit Electric LED strip from Costco into my HA a while ago but didn’t have great success. But at this price I’ll take a shot and set it up in the cloud app if I can’t work it in HA.

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Short answer: no.

Long answer: noooooooooooooooo. Tuya has a terrible API and basically abandoned development of their HA integration. There are third party integrations that use undocumented API features with varying levels of success.

Avoid their devices if you can.

2 Likes
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Thanks Yahtzee

Since I shot first and asked questions later, hopefully anyone else seeing this can balance the risk for themselves.

Cheers,

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Welcome to community! Thanks for info! They are the ‘Merkury EW010 Smart LED Strip RGBW (one warm white LED)’ devices. Easy to flash to OpenBeken or LibreTiny via CloudCutter. No need to open the case (which is easy to do if you want to look inside) Chip is a ‘TUYA CB3S BK7231N’ Pin definitions are below. The LED layout is not the best, the single warm white led is maybe 10 mm away from the RGB LED, so they do not mix that well. But for three USD’s what do you want. LED strip is 5 volt, so replaceable. If you want some simple accent lights for things, great price and easy to make completely local. You could connect multiple of them using OpenBeken DDP implementation and make nice light show I think.

Pin 9: Btn_SmartLED on channel 0
Pin 7: PWM on channel 4  White
Pin 8: PWM on channel 0  Red
Pin 24: PWM on channel 1 Green
Pin 26: PWM on channel 2 Blue

P.S. shipping on the whole 12 units was 6 bucks, so price is a little higher that 3 USD. Total all in price with tax and shipping to CA: $44.79. They were delivered in 5 days via Fedex.

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I purchased the same ones for the same reason. I was able to get them flashed easily using cloudcutter. I chose to use LibreTiny kickstart (esphome) which you have to setup following their guide

Here is an example esphome yaml for the pinouts/functionality

binary_sensor:
  - platform: gpio
    pin:
      number: P9
      inverted: true
    id: button
    name: "Button"

output:
  - platform: ledc
    id: output_red
    pin: PWM2
  - platform: ledc
    id: output_green
    pin: PWM4
  - platform: ledc
    id: output_blue
    pin: PWM5
  - platform: ledc
    id: output_white
    pin: PWM1

light:
  - platform: rgbw
    id: rgb_lights
    name: "Lights"
    red: output_red
    green: output_green
    blue: output_blue
    white: output_white
    
  - platform: monochromatic
    id: led_red
    name: "Red"
    output: output_red
  - platform: monochromatic
    id: led_green
    name: "Green"
    output: output_green
  - platform: monochromatic
    id: led_blue
    name: "Blue"
    output: output_blue
  - platform: monochromatic
    id: led_white
    name: "White"
    output: output_white
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Thanks @dproffer and @nuggets - I just came across cloudcutter and came back here to ask about it. I hadn’t gotten notified of your responses.
This may be an interesting option for me but it’d probably take me some time to get up to speed with it. It seems just a bit over my head right now.
I couldn’t help but notice this model number was added to the cloudcutter device list last week, right around when these Meh shipment would have started delivering!

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Hope you find some fun and use out of converting some of the Tuya cloud based devices to 100% local, I have and continue too. Up front, not all of the Tuya products are convertible, so do your research. However, these LED strips are a great starting point for learning how to do this conversion at USD under 4 bucks each. tuya-cloudcutter and tuya-convert are two good tools to have in your quiver / backpack. The video linked below with a Raspberry Pi and a beverage is a good starting point to learn, good hunting!

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They’re back, in a smaller set!
https://meh.com/ today (2023-06-26) is selling a 6-pack for $18 vs the 12 pack for $36, with the same $6 flat shipping per order or per month if you subscribe. So you can still have 12, but also 18, 24, 30, or any multiple of 6 for the same $6 shipping.
As said above these have been shown to work with Cloudcutter for Tuya though I haven’t tried it myself.

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These are back on sale for $12 for 3. Use the code BRADSFS for the $6 off after choosing the $6 shipping. For me they are $13.06 shipped after tax. I’ll flash them over to local control once they arrive.

Meh: 3-Pack: Merkury Innovations Smart Wi-Fi LED Strips (9.8’)

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