Aldi in Germany offers somewhat regularly those LED light columns:
They can also be found on Amazon.de and Kaufland.de.
They do feature no app support and only an IR remote and a touch sensor on top to turn them off and on.
You can however somewhat easily hack them.
You’ll need:
- a DC to DC power supply (buck converter) which can turn 24 V to 5 V. If you choose a different one, make sure it can regulate the voltage.
- an Esp8266, like the Wemos D1 mini
- Some wire
- A soldering iron
- Two Logic Level Converters (5 channels total are needed)
- Multimeter
- 2 sided tape
As there are some different device types out there, and you might want to pick up one from Amazon or Kaufland instead of Aldi, here’s a generalized approach how to proceed, instead of a detailed one tailored for the Aldi device:
- Remove the small plastic nails holding the cap in
- Lift the upper part of the lamp
The end of the LED-Strip is soldered onto some wires, which run onto a circuit board. These are unlabeled, but if you turn the light off with the remote, you should be able to identify power and ground.
- Connect your Buck Converter to the Power and Ground pins and connect the Wemos D1 Mini to the buck converter.
- Connect 3.3 V from the Wemos D1 Mini-Port to the LV ports of the Logic-Level-Converters
- Connect Ground from the Wemos D1 Mini-Port to the G ports of the Logic-Level-Converter
- Connect 5 V from the Buck Converter to the HV ports of the Logic-Level-Converters
Now you need to identify the IC which controls the individual LED-Channels with 5 Volt PWM signals. This should be the IC with the most pins. Turn on the light to each channel individual and identify the PWM signal by comparing on and off of the light. You should see something between 4.5 and 5 V DC on one pin going up and down depending if you turn on the light on the channel.
- Once you’ve identified each of the Red, Green and Blue channels, as well as the Warm White and Cold White channels, remove the IC by desoldering.
- Connect 5 wires to each of those pads on the PCB and to the High Voltage sides of the Logic Level Converts. Then connect the Low Voltage Sides to the Wemos D1 Mini.
Now take 2 sided tape or glue to connect the individual additional components you’ve installed to the casing - make sure that they don’t touch the spray-painted plastic, as it may be conductive paint!.
In the end it should look something like this:
ESPHome can be configured like this:
output:
- platform: esp8266_pwm
pin: D5
frequency: 400 Hz
id: cw
min_power: 0.005
max_power: 1.0
zero_means_zero: true
- platform: esp8266_pwm
pin: D0
frequency: 400 Hz
id: ww
min_power: 0.005
max_power: 1.0
zero_means_zero: true
- platform: esp8266_pwm
pin: D3
frequency: 400 Hz
id: r
min_power: 0.005
max_power: 1.0
zero_means_zero: true
- platform: esp8266_pwm
pin: D1
frequency: 400 Hz
id: g
min_power: 0.005
max_power: 1.0
zero_means_zero: true
- platform: esp8266_pwm
pin: D2
frequency: 400 Hz
id: b
min_power: 0.005
max_power: 1.0
zero_means_zero: true
light:
- platform: rgbww
name: "$friendly_name"
red: r
green: g
blue: b
cold_white: cw
warm_white: ww
cold_white_color_temperature: 6500 K
warm_white_color_temperature: 2700 K
color_interlock: true
constant_brightness: true