Convert dal lighting (non pro) panel lights to esphome

Hardware
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1

DISCLAIMERS

  • This may void the UL/ETL certification!
  • There is no need to have the device hooked to mains for converting, but if you do for some reason, BE CAREFUL!

You’ve been warned, now, let’s get to the good stuff.

I have a bunch of the non pro Dal Lighting 4" and 6" panel lights, seen here.

These are UL/ETL certified lights that use a tuya chip for wifi control (TYWE2L board aka esp8285N08). It’s really as simple as desoldering the daughter board, desoldering the chip from the daughter board and hooking up UART with power and flashing. Bang, esphome backed, possibly UL certified lights. Swapping the MCU firmware, may void the certification if the og firmware had safety stops in it and also removes manufacturer firmware upgrades.

Disassembly

The light comes with a junction box to convert and buck mains voltage to 12-30V DC. The actual light itself has a DC barrel jack that twist locks in place.

There is a back plate on the light unit with 4 screws and a cord reliever. After removing the back plate, the PCB is sandwiched with mastic between insulators and a light reflecting/blocking shim.

The strip of LEDs is diffused by what looks to be acrylic with refracting cuts on the surface and an additional frosted diffuser.

The UART and IO0 pins are on the backside of the chip which requires desoldering the chip from the daughter board. If only they were exposed, this would of been extremely easy and would remove the chance of damage from desoldering (lifting traces, etc.)

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Board Closeups

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Tips

  • remember to ground IO0 pad when booting to get it into flash mode. To start chip in normal mode, don’t ground IO0 at boot

  • take your time desoldering, on my first one I wasn’t very careful and lost the green channel because I was rushing. I did lift 2 or 3 pads on the green daughter board, but they were still conductive and work. I ended up messing the green channel trace on the main PCB when desoldering, the solder mask is very fragile on the main PCB. See the last pic and zoom into the pin holes, you can see the 2nd pin from left (green channel) trace is messed up :frowning:

  • I used enamel coated wires and left them soldered to the pins on the back of the chip when I re-soldered the chip back onto the daughter board. This gives me easy access to the UART and IO0 pins if I ever need them.

YAML

I found this yaml from another user already in the esphome device list here. I modified it to use 8285 board and adjusted the ww-cw kelvin values


esphome:
  name: ${device_name}
  platform: ESP8266
  board: esp8285

output:
  - platform: esp8266_pwm
    pin: GPIO4
    id: output_g
  - platform: esp8266_pwm
    pin: GPIO5
    id: output_r
  - platform: esp8266_pwm
    pin: GPIO12
    id: output_ww
  - platform: esp8266_pwm
    pin: GPIO13
    id: output_b
  - platform: esp8266_pwm
    pin: GPIO14
    id: output_cw

light:
  - platform: rgbww
    color_interlock: true
    name: ${friendly_name}
    red: output_r
    green: output_g
    blue: output_b
    warm_white: output_ww
    cold_white: output_cw
    cold_white_color_temperature: 6500 K
    warm_white_color_temperature: 2700 K

Happy hacking!