Hi all, longtime user and lurker here. I’ve done some searching around, but unable to locate any plugins or documentation on integrating the BenQ Screenbar. I love the control that the optional control dial brings, but don’t want to take up anymore space on my desk.
Does anyone have any experience with this, or can anyone point me in a similar direction?
Thanks in advance!
A.f.a.i.k the screenbar has no connectivity whatsoever, and the dial is wired. How would you expect to integrate it then? A smart plug with an usb adapter is about as far as I can think of (there are smart usb chargers too I believe, that amounts to the same but I do not know one that integrates).
Thanks, @Edwin_D ! The connectivity of the light and dial was what I wanted clarity on, since the website is not very forthcoming about details. I wouldn’t expect it to integrate at this point-- you basically confirmed my suspicions.
I’ll be looking elsewhere for desk light options.
too bad, would have loved being able to control this via HA!
The device seems to be using the Holtek BC5602 RF 2.4GHz Transceiver and based on the datasheet it seems to be using GFSK modulation.
Yes the BENQ Screenbar Halo is wireless. It’s the model that adds a backlight. It’s a great light. An automation would be awesome.
The screenbars are great for anyone wanting a desklight without a desklight.
How can we use this information? Not being snarky, I’m genuinely curious because I want to integrate this maybe using an ESP32…
yes, would also love to see this integration happen
Has anyone had any success with sending commands to the BenQ Screenbar Halo?
The FCC report tells us the used frequency is between 2405.0 and 2475.0 MHz.
The manual says to pair a controller to a light, you have to hold the “mode switch button” and then tap and hold the “favourite button” for about 5 seconds to enter pair mode. On the screenbar itself you have to unplug it, cover the light sensor (between the 2 downward lights) and plug it in again (within 15 seconds) to initiate the pairing.
But the light doesn’t show up as a BLE device on my phone nor does ZHA find anything while the light is in pairing mode.
Also, this Reddit post suggests that they’re using some proprietary protocol.
So it looks like one would need to hook up some ESP to either the remote or the base unit itself.
no further progress so far?
Don’t get excited, because I have no time to dig into this 
… but I figured I’d share this in case anyone is interested in rolling up their sleeves. I was wondering if a Flipper Zero + wifi board could be used to figure out the RF signal (looks like thats a no-go). But I asked ChatGPT 5 and it recommended some very low cost boards and spit out a ton of ESPHome config/.h/.cpp files. Assuming it didn’t hallucinate all of this, this might be an interesting place to start. ChatGPT - Flipper Zero radio capabilities.
I checked the link you sent. It’s along the right lines, although it has abstracted out the entire thing that you would actually have to solve.
From the PCB images included in the FCC filings I can see that it uses a Cypress CY8C4125LQI-483 PSoC as the actual brains, and then as mentioned in the Reddit thread, a BC5602 as a 2.4GHz BFSK transceiver, also I spotted a TC9539PWR on there, which is just an I2C I/O expander, probably being used for the big ring of LED lights (so that they don’t have to connect dozens of LEDs up to the PSoC’s GPIOs, because the PCB around the PSoC is already crowded enough - they can instead just use a few traces to get I2C to the expander and then use that instead, that’s my guess anyways). Also close to the BC5602 on the PCB is a pretty standard 2.4GHz PIFA/inverted-F with meandering line antenna.
The BC5602 can be thought of as essentially just an SPI driven 2.4GHz GFSK transceiver. The PSoC is just sending SPI commands to the transceiver and then it does all the heavy lifting and GFSK modulation. so sniffing the SPI bus between the BC5602 and PSoC with a logic analyser during operation would be sufficient to be able to “replay” commands.
In any case, it’s probably better to use the sniffed SPI bus data to actually figure out some sort of protocol, or make an attempt at reverse engineering it a little bit further, so that you aren’t just blindly replaying things.
But yeah, the actual hard work here would be sniffing SPI, working backwards from the BC5602 datasheet to figure out what data is being sent, work out/reverse engineer the structure of said data. Then you could just use any old microcontroller (as long as it can do SPI) and a BC5602 chip, and send it the same SPI commands that the PSoC is sending on the actual remote. Although you might need to also figure out the pairing procedure first.
As far as BC5602 goes, looks like there are modules available which would save you from creating a custom PCB to handle pin breakout/antenna/the required crystal oscillator etc.: https://www.bestmodulescorp.com/en/bm5602-60-1.html
However for anyone reading this, the part above about hooking up any microcontroller to that BC5602 module is only applicable in a future scenario where the SPI reverse engineering has been completed. DO NOT GO BUYING ONE OF THESE MODULES EXPECTING IT TO MAGICALLY ALLOW YOU TO TALK TO THE SCREENBAR HALO - IT CAN ONLY BE USED IN THE EVENT THAT SOMEONE SNIFFS THE SPI BUS AND FIGURES OUT THE DATA BEING SENT/RECEIVED.