Interesting touch switch lanbon l8

It seems bizarre to put two wifi chips in the same device?

I was contacted by lanbon directly 3 months ago offering this new switch. Early this year I purchased 30 ā€œoriginalā€ switches directly from them via alibaba and they had my details. I asked if they would continue offering/supporting the direct mqtt version and they said yes.

This is the email. [email protected]

Worth asking them directly, but to order via alibaba min qty is 5 units.

Maybe (Iā€™m not sure) this has something to do with tuya support and a proprietary chip that is there as a tuya requirement?

Maybe this is just a wrong shipment and they have versions with and without tuya? But it seems weird to me to have 2 different pcbā€™s (with and without tuya support) while they only have to remove the tuya module for the ā€œnormalā€ version.

I found out that it uses the FT6336 (V or U?) Touch controller, so it canā€™t use the pre-compiled firmware for the Landon L8, because that uses the FT5206 controller.

I am willing to compile my own firmware IF I can find out if the LCD controller is the same and which pins it uses for SPI communication. Problem is that I really donā€™t have a clue what the pins on the LCD ribbon are, any help figuring out controller and Pinout is appreciated :sweat_smile:

The touch controller should both be compatible with the openHASP build. They only differ slightly in features and we use the same driver for both chips.

It would be strange if they changed the pins on the LCD, so my bet would be to just try the current Lanbon L8 build. To be sure, backup the original firmware first :).

That is good to know!
I thought they would be different because the wiki has ā€œ -D TOUCH_DRIVER=5206ā€ defined for compilation, but I just looked at the configuration on GitHub and they have ā€œ -D TOUCH_DRIVER=6336ā€. I first want to try and see what the tuya and ESP32 module are gossiping about, I will definitely make a backup first before trying openhasp.

I also want to add that if you want to flash/program the ESP32 via the exposed connector, you can only power the ESP32 with the 5v input, not the 3.3v.

The Landon L8 uses two well known 1117 linear regulators to go from 5v to 3.3v.

  • One for the ESP32 (and in my case the tuya module) and moodlights.
  • One for the touchscreen controller and the LCD+Backlight.

The 3.3v connection on the exposed pin header is the one that powers the display only.

edit:
Flashed openhasp en it is working :slight_smile:

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Iā€™m glad to hear openHASP is working on the Tuya versionā€¦ thatā€™s a big relief!

Thanks for pointing this out, the wiki indeed needs an update :slight_smile:

Good to know, Iā€™ll add that to the documentation too.

wow what an abomination. they just jammed in a tuya module to have connection to their cloud. probably because tuya doesnā€™t have a ready made solution for ESP32 chips or they completely ditched Espressif.

I just desoldered the Tuya module and completely removed it, and it is still working normally.
I didnā€™t want the extra energy usage (how minimal it might be). I am a bit worried that in the future the ESP32 might be omitted completely.

Well done.

But tik tok? God preserve us from this nonsense.

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Need some help here, i erased, rebooted and flashed l8 with the latest lanbon_l8_full_8MB_v0.6.2.bin. Flashing seems successful:

Uploading stubā€¦
Running stubā€¦
Stub runningā€¦
Changing baud rate to 921600
Changed.
FLASH_CRYPT_CNT 0
ABS_DONE_0 False

is stub and send flash finish

After reboot, the screen appears to be blank and not showing the wifi screen with QR its supposed to? What am i doing wrong?

It appears the flash didnā€™t complete correctly. What tool did you use the flash the .bin file?
When monitoring the serial output at reboot after the upload you should be able to see the log messages. Does the device output anything to the serial log?

Damnā€¦ so dumb of me!
I am using ESP flash tool. Forgot to tick the box where the file path is selected. It wasnt writing anything! all good now, thanks! :slight_smile:

Could you tell me what cables you used to attach to the face plate please?

I want to mount one in a bathroom, just as a touch plate, not using the relays.

I want to keep the back box in an adjacent room so thereā€™s only low voltage cable going to the plate in the bathroom.

Thanks.

If itā€™s adjacent any type of cable will do, and you only need 2 wires.

Carefully running the L8 in humid place such as a bathroom, it is not IP rated

Thanks for the info, I just saw someone recommending cat5 cable being the perfect size.

The sales dept at Lanbon insisted that the L8 was ip64 rated, although itā€™s not listed in any documentation Iā€™ve read, so Iā€™m sceptical and will bring it up with their tech support, who I need to contact about their iOS app anyway.

This has been a really interesting thread to read to see the development of the L8 being integrated to HA and the ways of doing so.

Have any of you investigated since the latest version of the plate? It now comes with inbuilt HA compatibility.

These are the instructions for anyone interested. I just received my units and and am going to be attempting this over the next few days. Very new to HA - I literally have a Zigbee dongle, 2 LED strips, and this will be my first switch! Iā€™ll report back with my successes/frustrations. Cheers!







They have been advertising that since I created the first post in this thread a 14 months ago :slight_smile:

Sorry, didnā€™t realise that, sales gave me the impression it was new.

So, pardon my ignorance, if itā€™s had this compatibility all this time, then why all the work arounds with OpenHasp etc?