I do not have the parts to program one of these, have never need it before. I have a power strip that has the Tuya chip on it and I would really like it to be either Tasmota or ESPHome. I guess if it came as Tasmota, I could flash it over to esphome at any point via ota. Just need a basic load of Tasmota, enough to spin up the AP and connect to it.
I have very bad glaucoma, so it will be a chore... but I really want the power strip to be useful!
Hooking up those leads will be a lot easier than SMD soldering a replacement ESP module.
I would usually agree that dumping the Tuya ecosystem is desirable, but with your eyesight situation is understandable you may find that difficult. Do you really need to reprogram the ESP8266 chip? Maybe settle for the hazards/compromise of integrating the official or add-on Tuya app in HomeAssistant (there is more than one) and use the Tuya ecosystem cloud instead?
Have you considered asking another local electronics enthusiast for help? It's five wires for five minutes per device usually, and you just need a $5 USB to serial 3.3v adapter (as listed above in the other posts - I use the one with the gold edges for many years). I note from your picture above that somebody has already been there with a fine soldering iron on a few of the pads. Sometimes the appropriate pins are terminated to a cluster of pads that are easier to solder to - look for a cluster of 4 or 5 that are close together or post a photo of both sides of the board for us to see. See Getting Started - Tasmota and also FAQ - Tasmota and don't forget TX to RX, and RX to TX when connecting and the GPIO 0 for getting your ESP8266 into programming mode issues that often stump newcomers.
What is the make and model of your power strip device, and approximate year of manufacture? There have been workarounds that don't involve disassembly and connecting serial programmers for some older Tuya firmware, and a software solution is less effort. Efforts like CloudCutter or TuyaConvert have proved useful in the past.
Blakadder maintains a database of devices that is reputable and very extensive and you may find your device listed there with detailed hints as to your best approach to flash Tasmota. See:
Tell us the device name and model number. Post some pics. Let us know how you go.
I was misleading... It has the tuya chip onboard and I am trying to get tuya cloudcutter environment set up to see if I can load a modified esphome to it wirelessly.
The device is a Tonbux SM-SO301 Tomux on Amazon
I have converted many Sonoff and other brand devices via USP/Serial programmer, I may give a go to tacking a dupont wire to Vcc/GND/TX/RX and see if I can still see well enough. Getting old sucks! As little as 5 years ago, I could do SMD with just my glasses on. I am guessing it is 5 to 6 years old. The version for the chip is modified ESPHome. LibreTiny ESPHome
You may be lucky with TuyaConvert, otherwise a large magnifying lamp with a very bright light and a fan to blow the solder flux fumes away from the lens (and more importantly your lungs) may be a worthwhile investment to add to your well tinned soldering iron and very fine solder. Let us know how you go.
The device uses the TYWE3S, it appears that I can flash Tasmota directly to it. TuyaConvert was unable to convert it, it came to me with the new Tuya software on it and it would not convert it. The unit works fine in the Tuya app and in HA via the Tuya integration.
Managed to get my Pi4 running Bullseye to properly run Tuya-convert tonight, it complains about not being an esp8266 chip and fails. My understanding was that this was a fixed PR to handle these chips. If it rains this weekend, I may get time to solder on jumper wires and flash it the old fashioned way.
Good news is most of your connections are on the corners, and the GPIO 0 is the one you can just touch temporarily to invoke programming mode.
I've heard of BluTack instead of soldering for connection to your serial programmer, but you might not get a good enough connection to flash the entire contents in one go. Messy but no fumes and burnt fingers!
Not worth 3D printing a jig with pogo pins if you are only doing one or two devices. Quick, pre-tinned soldering is the most reliable way, using breadboard jumper cables and a large pair of tweezers to hold into place while the solder cools without making a dry joint.
Once you have code on it, OTA updates should enable you to skip this step in future forever.
Yup, I am going to give this a shot on some rainy evening soon. Thanks
I am going to try my luck this weekend at adding dupont wires to the module. If I can get that done, I will post back. The replacement option may be better, not sure yet. I have a full hot air reflow station and should be able to pull the module and drop a different one on. It is working with bigger surfaces and not with small soldering iron tip.
I have not built the file yet, have located the gpio needed and was going to get it online with a base install of either Tasmota or ESPHome and then work on the config. My goal in the short term was to get something on it I could OTA. I think ESPHome with captive portal and ap mode to allow wifi config would get me there. Might also need the api: with out encryption in place.
I am very unparanoid:
This is at the top of all of my ESPHome projects:
substitutions:
device_name: esp12-test
friendly_name: ESP12 Test
project_version: "1.0"
my_ssid: !secret iot_ssid
my_pass: !secret iot_password
wifi:
ssid: ${my_ssid}
password: ${my_pass}
min_auth_mode: WPA2
power_save_mode: none # Disable power-saving mode to avoid flashing Status LED
mdns:
disabled: False
ota:
platform: esphome
web_server:
port: 80
esphome:
name: ${device_name}
esp8266:
board: esp12e
logger:
api:
Once you get the ESP onlnine, you can update over WiFi.
I use the following for wifi...
${wifi_ssid}
${wifi_password}
Other wise that looks great for a base...