Neewer shipped it’s RGB660 lights, a popular budget video- and photography light, with Bluetooth support. But in my experience both the phone app as well as the bluetooth stack on the lights are horrendous. Thus I built a little gizmo that mounts directly to the back of the light and allows you to reliably control your Neewer RGB660 lights over WIFI using Home Assistant and ESPHome! For convenience and simplicity, it hooks directly into the lights power source and doesn’t require any additional cable runs. Once installed, it just permanently lives with the light and provides a reliable WIFI connection.
I’ve shared the full instructions on how to build one yourself on my blog. Please check them out there!
If you would like to upgrade your Neewer RGB660 but don’t feel comfortable building one yourself, you can now buy the Neewer RGB660 Wi-Fi modules prebuilt from my Tindie store.
I’ve also created a custom ESPHome firmware in the process that allows you to easily pair your ESPHome powered MCU with a light without having to recompile the firmware with the Bluetooth MAC hardware address. Instead, the firmware automatically finds the light and gives you the option to simply pair to it via a simple button press. The WIFI Controller ESPHome firmware can be found on my Github.
I’m not sure. I only was able to test it with Neewer RGB660. I find it likely to be working with other lights in the same series (Neewer RGB), but haven’t had an opportunity to try yet.
What specific lights do you have? If you have a ESP32 tossing around you could simply flash the firmware to it and see if it can connect and control the light. I’d be willing to help to see if we can get it to work with lights other than RGB660.
I have not, I‘m sorry. My best guess is that they will work. But I can’t be sure until we had a chance to test it.
If you would like to test the Neewer 660 RGB Pro II lights I’ll be happy to give you a full refund should we not be able to get them to work. So you won’t have any risk if you want to give it a shot.
Sounds great and amazing work btw! I‘ve just ordered two 660 RGB Mk.2 today. I‘d love to solder the controllers myself but buying all parts will most likely end up costing the same as supporting you and buying them through your store, so that‘s my preferred route. Any chance you will be traveling back home to Germany anytime soon and wanna bring over 2 modules?
Ha, I just returned from Germany. I went back home for Christmas and New Years.
I do offer shipping to Germany / Europe from my Tindie store. But it’s expensive. It’s at least $24 for packaging and shipping. That would make a set a total price, including shipping of ~$76. And Germany charges another 19% of the item value in VAT (“Mehrwertsteuer”), putting the total at closer to $86. Not to mention that returning them in case of them not working would likely be just as expensive.
I can offer the following:
Once you get your new lights you order a simple ESP32 from Amazon.de. I will help you flash the Neewer Controller firmware to the ESP32, which will allow us to test compatibility with the firmware.
If the firmware is compatible and you are still interested in getting my “off the shelve” version, you can order them through the store and I’ll knock the 7 EUR you paid for the ESP32 off of the purchase price.
