Hey everyone, I’ll update the first post shortly; there’s a better way to tell the bulbs to use your local MQTT server rather than the web one. Also, I’ve made some small changes here and there to streamline the process.
Hi and thanks for this guide. I have couple of questions, if u your able to reply.
Firstly, my bulbs are now on and do not respond to home assistant OR Alexa. I can only use manual switching.
Secondly, how can I undo the link to mosquitto to get back to where I was because I have now realised that if I direct to my own mqtt then Alexa loses control. Alexa control is important to me at the moment, though I may look to use home assistant cloud. I don’t really want to pay the subscription but the other method looks complex.
I have done a hard reset off the bulbs and that got alexa back, but is there a “softer” method?
I know that I should have realised this before even trying this, but I am a noob and trying to get to grips with all this is a bit baffling, even though I have thirty years of programming experience on Windows. Linux is a whole new world of pain.
Any help, especially with resetting mqtt to the original, would be wonderful.
Thanks.
Did you manage to solve the issue? I’ve same trouble
Hi vmannoor. No, I haven’t solved the problem really. The hard reset put things back to where they were, so that I can now control the lights again from Alexa.
Ideally I want both worlds; control lights with Alexa and, if I wish, with HA. It seems this is not possible without paying a subscription (see home assistant cloud).
An alternative which I considered was to set up my own voice recognition on home assistant but that sounds complex and I only have one of the early pi units which is unlikely to be up to the job.
If you find an answer then I would be grateful to know what it is.
Kind Regards.
Just use the steps outlined here. It’s actually quite simple.
I’ve been using Home Assistant together with Alexa and iOS HomeKit for a while now. Everything interoperates with each other and is seamless. There’s no reason to not set up the Alexa skill. It’s free!
Thanks for the reply. I will take a look at that and make sure I follow it carefully.
It is nice to know that there are people willing to help in this community. Thank you.
Thank you very much for the guide. I can’t get the script running, logs show error 127. Any idea what is the reason. I’m running HassOS on rpi 3
These bulbs also publish their status with topic dev_pub_{mac address}, but the payload seems to be encoded, anyone here tried to decode them?
Error 127 usually means that the script you are trying to run is not found.
I suggest you read the referenced pages in the first paragraph of the guide:
Following this blog post I’ve created a custom_component to manage the bulbs without having to include ‘mosquito_pub’ and all its deps.
This is my first custom_component so any suggestion or advice would be appreciated.
I have two bulbs connected in my home using it and everything works nice.
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@thorin8k Thank you for this integration. Just asking myself: what is meant with “broker ip” and “broker password”? Is that mqtt or my account details for the app? or even my home assistant pw?
I am trying to integrate my bulb with a broadlink chip that uses the “magic home” app. I originally bought it here.
Hi @snelu, broker ip, user and password are the credentials and info of your mqtt broker (mosquitto, etc).
If you use Home Assistant’s mosquitto it could be a Home Assistant user. This is covered in the mqtt guide: addons/DOCS.md at master · home-assistant/addons (github.com)
Hello, I just can’t get the Integration after I install your custom_component via HACS, or manually (I left some explanation as an issue in https://github.com/thorin8k/techlife_bulb).
I just wanted to ask… whats the correct order of the files inside custom_components?
This is the unzipped folder:
But this is what i get when I intall it with HACS
Please note I get a different folder name, and just 3 files, not all of the zip file.
Any ideas of what files inside what forlder name should I get to see Techlife integration and install it? So far I made a lot of combination and nothing works:
Best regards
Hi!
I’m sorry but the integration cannot be configured via UI, you have to set it up via yaml and is not installable via HACS.
I am sorry but i havent had time to improve it and it serves my needs as it is.
Feel free to make a pull request or reuse any piece of code.
Hello!
I have a led strip controller.
It used your integration and it doesn’t work with dnsmasq, but it does with the sircharlo redirect.
Do I need to configure something else in HA?
Is there any way to change the color?
Hi,
I’ve been throught all info in this forum and OpenHab, yet still I coulnd’t get my led strip to connect to my local MQTT broker 
I have an Eclipse MQTT container up and running, with user testuser, password testpassword. (I also tried with testuser and testpass, as I noticed this was used in these scripts.)
I had my MQTT broker restarted after every change.
I used the script of the opening post to try to redirect my light to my local broker. But no matter how many times I retry, nothing seems to happen. I can still control the light with the TechLife Pro app, and not with any other script.
Any idea on what I could be doing wrong?
/ # echo -en "\xaf\xc0\xa8\x56\x56\x5b\x07\xf0\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\xc4\xb0" | mosquitto_pub -t "dev_sub_**:**:**:**:**:**" -h "cloud.qh-tek.com" -s
/ # echo -en "\xaf\xc0\xa8\x56\x56\x5b\x07\xf0\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\xc4\xb0" | mosquitto_pub -t "dev_sub_**:**:**:**:**:**" -h "cloud.hq-tek.com" -s
Unable to connect (Lookup error.).
/ #
Hi,
After three failed attempts, a few days ago I resumed my attempt to get the light bulb going in Home Assistant.
My conclusion is that the forum posts are partially outdated and that the manufacturers have changed some things.
Regarding your post, I have only been able to redirect the traffic via DNS. Also, keep in mind that both the username and password are subject to change. My lightbulb was using “user” and “passwd”.
Given the lack of information I have forked a repo and updated it. Take a look at it GitHub - Nelnitorian/techlife_bulb: Techlife Bulb custom_component for Home Assistant.
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