All of this to dim an LED down? Not sure whether to call you guys HA fanatics, perfectionists, or simply people with a lot of free time on their hands.
Incidentally, this reminds me of a similar discussion when the first X-Box came out. Many ‘hackers’ managed to get inside the box, and write software that would turn off the always-on LED as they thought the bright green was bothersome… Then there was this brave sould who shared his very ingenious solution: “I simply covered the LED with a piece of black tape…”
Great work nonetheless … now, if only you can put a similar effort into reviving the ability to flash a different firmware ‘by-air’ i.e., without having to desolder-resolder … any volunteers ?
I’m just a tinkerer. The LED dimming was just fun - to see how it works. I have an Arduino starter kit still sitting in the box b/c I’m learning so much from playing with light switches (when I’m not shocking myself!)
I don’t think I will bother doing the mod on the rest of the switches - but since I had these two open and had to do the de-solder/re-solder routine anyway - how much time did it take to scratch a trace and solder two ends of a wire. The rest of the code was just ESPHome learning for me.
As you say - it would be great to NOT have to take the switches apart in the first place, in which case I’m CERTAIN I never have tried the LED mod.
This was definitely in the “Gee Whiz - look what I could do” category.
@flynmoose … It’s all in good spirit my friend. I bought 2 Arduino ‘Tinker’-Kits a while back (Original Arduino + SparkFun) as I’ve always been fascinated by electronics. The Arduino/Raspberry made it all even more attractive and intriguing. However, due to lack of time, I gave those to my nephews and I hope they put them to good use. These are very interesting times we live in, so many things to learn, yet so little time. Keep at it, I’m always curious what fellow ‘tinkerers/thinkers’ come up with.
hi i just bought these 3 pack at costco today and this topic is way too long to read it all
but i folllowed part of it to get the firmware installed
i ran the one file said yes to everything
till it goto wanting to flash when i flashed it it told me too new
Attempting to diagnose the issue…
Your device’s firmware is too new.
Tuya patched the PSK vulnerability that we use to establish a connection.
You might still be able to flash this device over serial.
For more information and to follow progress on solving this issue see:
but i read the article on the other site talking about taking the light switch apart i guess/ well i dont wanna do that…l
is there a way to get this to work? or is the firmware to new on this cant be done? i new to flashing so step by step be great if it can be flashed etc
No offense, but there’s your problem. The topics get pretty big, but best to scan, search, or at least skip to the bottom-ish part to see what’s current next time. Any Tuya type device (which a lot of ESP82XX devices are) manufactured after July-ish 2020, and virtually all made or bought after October 2020, will have new / patched TUYA firmware that prevents custom OTA flashing (e.g. tuya-convert). If you want to flash this, or any other new TUYA type product at this point in time, you’ll have to open them up and serially flash them (e.g. solder wires to a USB type device, etc.). No way around it until the very big IF day that someone finds another firmware vulnerability to exploit for OTA flashing again.
Edit: just wanted to add that there are other switches out there that are easier to open / flash than this one. The Feit dimmer’s biggest hurdle is the need to desolder the TYWE2S module (the part that contains the ESP chip) in order to get to the necessary pins. Some dimmers and what not have pin headers, or at the very least easy to get to pin points to solder your connector to. If that’s still too much or just beyond what you think you can do (it’s ok, not everyone is an electronic guru ), then your best bet is to either find maybe some used or old new stock on ebay, offerup, etc., or look for some of the few switches out there that actually come with Tasmota already on them (see here). Alternatively some devices (e.g. Shelly, etc.) have firmwares that allow local control with built-in MQTT and/or HTTP functions, which will let you do many of the same things you might do / want with a custom firmware flash. You’ll have to Google a bit for those, but that’s really the only way for now to avoid doing the dirty work yourself.
well i was reading orginally though this was a how to link thats why andthen didnt realize there so much trouble lol
do you have a how to link desoldering doesnt help if i dont have pics How To Flash ESP devices with Tasmota Using Raspberry Pi | Siytek
link didnt help me
but mine doesnt look like that i have no pics of this one… so not sure where to solder
is there a link to how to
here are some pics of one i have i skimmed this article but i probably missed it on what to solder with close up pics… as what i found people only talked about soldering LED but i looking a specific link to get this switch to work with home assistant and my wifi…
those the last photos but htats only if you want to control the power LED
thats not how to reprogram the switch with the raspberry pi
because the link i posted
said i need TX RX and Gnd but these pictures
i did look at post 275 from 1 month ago… but there isnt really any pics he didnt show pics of parts removed… or what wires to hook up…
so there is no detailed picture
and in his 4th picture i dont knwo what that little blue square of plastic hes got going on there is
yes reason i said topic too long
as i expected a how to convert
so like 2 or 3 posts
with Stickys at the top of the post with detail picture of this board you desolder exactly this is what it looks desoldered
so like
step 1 .remove screws
step 2 remov these screws
step 3 you wanna cover this
step 4.desolder thi
step 5 this is TX RX GND locations
thats what i looking for
detailed steps with pictures right beside it so you cant screw it up
so what i trying to do is
i just bought these light switchs
and i need step by step how to get it to work with Home assistant
without the need of the internet /web app
i dont need to make the LED brighter i just want to get the light switch to work
i thought all you had to do was plug the light switch in and then it could link to raspberry pi and im done
I’m willing to help with the step-by-step for you since I was in your shoes just weeks ago… but DIY communities are “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” crowds. Reading and looking to see if someone else has already asked and been answered is the exchange for a free info that no one is under obligation to provide…
It sounds like you are new to both home automation that is not in the hands of “the cloud” and also new to hardware hacking.
This thread should not be the place to figure out how to setup Home-Assistant or the device management choice you need to make. Look elsewhere and ask good questions.
You have a choice to make if you want to flash these switches. Tasmota or ESPHome. This thread has a mix of both types of instructions. Again - how to set up ESPHome or TasmoAdmin (or other Tasmota/Sonoff management tool) is beyond this scope. But you have to pick…
You CANNOT flash these if they are newer without removing the TYWE2S chip from the main board. This will be VERY hard to do (but not impossible) with a soldering iron alone. It is MUCH easier if you have a SMD hot air gun / desoldering station with temp control.
So - if you hit this point and said “what does that mean?” or “I know nothing about soldering” - then you are probably at a FULL STOP unless you want to a) teach yourself how to de-solder and re-solder.
If so - plan on sacrificing at least one of your boards. I have both a quality soldering iron and an SMD work station and I still managed to destroy two of my 10 boards by tearing the traces away. For me - meh - it cost $20 to learn something.
But it sounds like you are looking for a “just make it work” solution. As previous poster said - there are switches out there that are easier to program and do not require soldering. If you bought these at Costco and are over your head - just take them back and move on.
Ok - presuming you still want to move forward, we could start a new thread that is the basics - rather than bury a blow-by-blow in this 300+ post thread. ALL of the necessary steps are in this thread - I figured it out myself. But if you want a consolidated, HOW DO I, let’s take it elsewhere.
see i bought these because they said 2.4ghz and home network same i bought the TPlink smart wifi switchs says 2.4ghz and links to your home network
i went this route as i didnt wanan buy a 100 dollar Z-Wave dongle for home assistant
and i find that this stuff is not plug and play like any Home network device
this doesnt work like a Brother Printer
you install the App or goto the Webserver of the device 192.168.0.1 and then you change the IP address of the switch and change your Wifi on the switch so its part of your own network WPA and you give it an ip address… easy peezy
i did not realize i have to de solder anything or take it apart
and i guess there is no plug and play works out of the box with Home assistant… but ill give it a try to read up. as i didnt expect any of this… just setup on my home network and i done
ill read this stuff in the morning as i have a headache now and ill have my head clear
as i bought 2 types of switchs the TP -link and my cell phone isnt good enough so i did bluestacks to get an android app but that didnt work
so i just have a headache i just wanted a simple plug it in configure it like a brother printer and your setup on your home network i dont understand why there is soo much herdles to get it to work on home network without internet … but ill re read trhe posts tommorow
Well, nothing is easy in home automation. You have two roads to take, and the choice is only yours.
Buy whatever devices you want, and use THEIR software/cloud
Do your homework, research products you’re interested in, and find out if they can be used stand-alone (no company cloud).
Most smart gizmos out there fall into category 1. If you want local control, then be ready to
invest a lot of time to get everything working with HA. None of this is plug-n-play … If you want this to be like your printer, you have the wrong expectations/understanding of HA
Again there are easier to flash dimmer switches out there. Even if you can’t currently OTA flash them with something like Tuya-Convert, a lot don’t require you to “desolder” anything like this one does. Martin Jerry switches for example are much easier, and there’s plenty of videos out there to show you how to do it. I changed out many of my Feit switches for these, as they’re capable of additional features (multi-press & long/short presses on both the main and dimmer up/down buttons) that Feit can’t do without extensive modding similarly to the above LED switch light project. In fact I only kept the Feit in places where aesthetics were a little more important, and also where I needed them to function with a traditional 3-way toggle switch. If you need a 3-way switch, and were considering the Martin Jerrys, be advised to AVOID the old Martin Jerry STD01 switch, as that one used a non-ESP (i.e. non-flashable) chip. The standard single pole SD01 Dimmer is good though (and the one I was originally talking about), as are the rest to my knowledge (including their newly released 3-way dimmers) which use TYWE3S ESP based modules. As I said to you a few posts back, if you find these or even the Feit dimmers on ebay as used or old new stock, then they might be old enough to still flash with Tuya-Convert… worth a look if you REALLY don’t want to try serially flashing these switches.
You’d have to change the resistor as well, blue leds have higher working voltage than any other leds. Some blue leds need higher than 3.3V, so likely to NOT work since most likely the logic board is powered off from 3.3V.
How is tasmota 9.x working? Do you lose commands like people were before? I flashed https://github.com/TheEebb/tasmota-tuyamcu-fix on mine, but it’s still on 8.5.0. My first one is working well but my 2nd was giving me unknown command for TuyaMCU and DimmerRange, will work on that tomorrow.
My issue was I needed to reflow the ESP. Must have been a bad connection to Tx or Rx. Did all 3 without destroying a single pad! I ended up using the air gun to preheat the board, then the iron to get all the pads (esp ground) hot, then the air gun rotating to each one. I also used liquid flux https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00RYTD0T8 and applied with a brush liberally before I started.
Wow the LEDs, especially the main button, are bright. I wish there was a way to control it or have it only on/blink with Wi-Fi problems, but I found some self adhesive vinyl (For vinyl cutters) at the hobby store. I used the silver and put one layer over the green lights and two layers over the white light. Here’s some comparison photos:
Not to bad for $1.50. I’m pretty sure this is what the lightdims people use for 10 times the price. You can see the white light a little bit in the dark.
), then your best bet is to either find maybe some used or old new stock on ebay, offerup, etc., or look for some of the few switches out there that actually come with Tasmota already on them (see 
