Mipow Playbulbs bluetooth le

Feature Requests
1

Hi,
those bulbs and candles are very nice ones. Unfortunately there is no component allowing them to be used in home assistant. Playbulbs candles works on the battery. There are not so many light sources working cordless. Would be great if that was implemented.

2

You can find the discussion about that, but it is stale.

I created an integration that Iā€™m using on my devices:

3

Hi, I am trying to install your Hassio-mipow adddon.

I succesfully installed the addon using HASC.

But than, I have no idea what to doā€¦ Reading the manual I have to do something with a text like this:

light:

  • platform: mipow
    devices:
    ā€œAA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FFā€:
    name: Name Your Device

But, where do I have to pastye it to? And, how can I discover the MAC adres of my BLE candle bulb?

4

I scrapped that by executing the bluetoothctl command on Linux, then executed scan on command there, as a result you should see some status messages comming out, just look for anything that has Playbulb in it (remember to turn on your candle):
image
In the above case Iā€™m interested for F7:F0:4B:18:AC:E6
Next, use for instance File editor in Home assistant (is available in the official HA addons) addons/configurator at master Ā· home-assistant/addons Ā· GitHub
And open configuration.yaml and add the section with your devices (keep formatting and indent)
image
The name you put (like in the examples PlayBulb I or PlayBulb II - is just your custom name that will be visible in Home Assistant).
After restart of HA you can add a card to your HA dashboard.

1 Like
5

Thanks! It is working!

Only one thingā€¦ The bulbs need to be very close to my pi, otherwise the connection is lostā€¦ I am not sure if this is because of a bad bluetooth on the pi or the bulbs. Do you have any idea? Do you know if it gets better by using a serperate bluetooth dongle on the pi?

6

Hi,
First of all, thank you very much for the plugin. Itā€™s going perfectly.
I first connected the candle to the cell phone via Bluetooth and was then able to read out the MAC. Then delete it again in the mobile phone, otherwise access will be denied by the plug-in.

Is it also possible to scan the MACā€™s with the Pluin and then add the candles?

I have a PI2 with HA running in Docker that only runs this plugin. I have a USB Bluetooth adapter for this. This runs over 2 floors.

Already wanted to sell my Playbulbs - but this gave them another use :slight_smile:

Are you planning further functions in the module or is this the final version?

Thank you again for the module

greeting
Herbert

7

Hi Herbert, is your Bluetooth so much better with an adapter than built in Bluetooth? Iā€™m using a pi 4, but the connection with the bulbs is not so good.

8

Hi,
it looks like this. I donā€™t have any problems with that at the moment. Thatā€™s why I took a PI that can be under the closet and controls the Playbulbs.
Is USB Bluetooth 4.0 LE adapter.
You can try it

1 Like
9

My Installation uses RPI 3B+ with the native BT hardware. My candles are placed around 5 meters from RPI, also behind walls and I have seen no issues so far.

Good power adapter for RPI and battery level in candles can have also an impact, but candles worked also with low battery level on my hardware.

Nice to hear Herbert, that your candles found another life. The same case was with mine.

Donā€™t know if I will add further functions to the module. Is there anything you need?
The auto-add feature will be too complex for me to implement at this moment, lack of time and also knowledge.

BTW: Nice idea on how to get the Candle MAC address using the original app - will add that to the docs.

10

Seems like a PI4 issue:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=260594

1 Like
11

Thanks. I am testing now with a bluetooth dongel. Results are far better so far.

12

Just can confirm that on RPI4 I was also not able to run the integration.
Installed HA on SSD connected to USB3.

The solution was not only to buy a BT adapter, but also a USB cable, and put the BT adapter around 2m away from RPI

13

Hi,
I have the integration running on a pi4 with Docker. At the same time, I also run homegaer in the same docker with an SCC module.
I have no problems with the built-in PI4 Bluetooth module. I can switch my 5 Playblubs without any problems - range approx. 5 meters.

Thanks again for the module :slight_smile:

14

Hi, Nice integration,
That PR was the one i made, funny seeing someone talking about something i did :slight_smile:
Regarding your custom addon: i see you based it on the the mipow code i made, but i wonder, did you make it specific for the candles, or does it still work with the playbulb models that i used.

I wonder if i should resurrect my old integration and see if it picks wind again.

15

Havenā€™t verified that on other hardware than the two candle types mentioned in the readme.
Even I have no plans to support that, as the bulbs (not candles) are still expensive and not so popular compared to other devices or technologies., thus I have no possibilities to verify that.
I saw in few other projects, referenced in the source, that there are also variants of devices that support only white color.
I would just assume that the integration should support most devices without any big problems.

16

Hi! Is the integration still compatible with the latest version(s) of HA? Im using a new installation and cannot install the integration anymoreā€¦

HACS is running, but after installing your repo, the mipow integration cannot be foundā€¦

I restarted HA multiple times and also cleared my browser cacheā€¦

EDIT: I can see that the required files are in the custom components folderā€¦ So, Only downloading the repo is enough to install the integration? However, also after configuring the configuration.yaml file, I cannot find the bulb under devicesā€¦ I am still a bit new to HA so maybe I am doing something wrongā€¦