Found some dirt cheap wifi bulbs and gave it a go. Bulbs arrived (didn’t check what app they used), connected them with the techlife app and that’s all. I could connect the app with google home but not with hass!
For now I can turn it on and off with google home mini, but I’d like the automations hass includes!
Does anyone use them?
I’ve tried tuya and smart life app to no avail, also tried tuya, limitlessled and flux_led in configuration just in case but nada.
For anyone reading this from now on:
Techlife bulbs use a different chip that we’re used to (RDA5981 as opposed to ESP used widely), so at the time we cannot flash them. There are 2 ways to use them in HA
Order an ESP-M3, flash it with tasmota and unsolder the old chip and solder the new one (check here)
Redirect the MQTT server to HomeAssistant and with some scripts work on them directly (check @sirchario posts found here)
Upsides/Downsides of first solution
.+ Tasmota firmware
.+ Device is local
.+ Home Assistant Discovery mode (no configuration needed)
.+ Security
.+ OTA updates
.- Ups the cost with the extra ESP (1,5-2€)
.- Soldering skills needed
.- A pretty good soldering iron needed. The solder on the 3 lines needs a LOT of heat to unsolder. On the upside though, bulb doesn’t care with excessive heat. Been there, done that. Bulb works flawlessly
Upsides/Downsides of second solution:
.+ No soldering required
.+ No altering firmwares etc
.+ You can use the bulbs with their own app if you decide to not use them anymore with Hass
.- Your router has to have the option to redirect dns to local ip (since you’ll redirect the chinas server to HA). If not, kiss this option goodbye.
,- Needs configuration with MQTT
,- No updates
,- Cannot use the app while the DNS is reverted to local
.- MQTT Server usernames and passwords needed are insecure
For the record, the techlife app can connect to google home, so I’m throwing commands from Hass to google home which in turn, sends the command to techlife app.
Problem is there are many hops and at some point google home loses connectivity with the platform. Another downside is I cannot see the state of the bulbs, only assume if they’re on or off.
Do we have a solution for that?
I’d be interested in an answer to this too. I just got a bunch of these bulbs for stupid low prices of Ali Express and would love to be able to control them from HASSIO rather than rely on the Google Home app for my family. It’s not an urgent thing, minimum functionality is they support Google Assistant, but would be really nice to automate these a bit better than relying on routines.
A little more useful, heres the app that sets the lights up and controls them. “Yet another” Chinese IoT company. I don’t have a proxy on my phone to sniff the traffic, but I am about to start hitting at the bulbs themselves with nmap and the rest to see what can be seen.
Good thought for that! As I don’t have the knowledge for sniffing traffic, it’d be great finding a solution.
For now, I’ve connected it to Google Home and bridged GH with Hass so I can “sort of” control them with 3 problems:
i) Delay for the commands is huge (>2 seconds)
ii) Can’t be sure about the state of the bulbs
iii) Sometimes linkage between Techlife and Google Home breaks and I have to relink them
I decided to go the “hard” way. Ordered a FTDI serial (needed it to flash sonoffs anyway), so when it arrives, I’l butcher the bulbs. They’re dirt cheap anyway
I also bought these from aliexpress, because i wanted to flash them with tasmota. It was an gamble, but so cheep that it was worth it.
Anyway, i started playing alittle around with these, and it turns out that they use mqtt to communicate with this qk-tek sky service.
It is possible to connect to the broker (without username or password), and you can see that the light identifies itself with its mac address, and listens to a topic called the same. All controllmessages comes here from the app. The problem it that its binary data, so its not that easy…
Anyway, i redirected dns to my local mqtt, and sure enough, the bulb connects just fine and i can send on and off to it.
I made a dump of the traffic and summarized it up here:
Im glad i found other people with the same “issue”. Been looking for a while on google, and i contacted the sky provider to get some developer docs. But they didnt even respond. (yet)
Lets try to get this working!
Good find!
Ultimately I opened the bulb (the top just pops off) and found out it uses a RDA5981, which is nowhere near compatible with ESP etc which we can flash in a heartbeat. I was thinking to buy a wemos mini and try to solder it and find out if it works, but it would raise the cost by 100%. At 10 bucks, you can get a better bulb with tyua integration.
In Home Assistant we can directly use MQTT and integrate ourselves, so no need for scripts etc.
Just for dummies (including me) with MQTT:
Which is the DNS we need to forward to our mqtt server?
If our MQTT server needs auth (which should for security reasons), can the bulb connect to it?
If there are 2 bulbs, what are the topics differences?
Salve ho comprato una lampadina Smart, quando cerco di configurarla al suo WiFi, dice di essersi connessa ma che non c’è nessuna connessione Internet.
come si può resettare x risolvere il problema
Gentilmente mi dite perché si collega al WiFi delle lampadine techlife però il wifi di esso dice che non c’è nessun accesso ad internet, poi vorrei sapere se qualcuno sa il sito ufficiale di techlife
Good Find too! I don’t know if it’s affordable though as it will get to aroud 10-12 bucks for this solution, let alone soldering skills. At 12 bucks aren’t there better solutions?
Price depends on how you’re sourcing them… I spent 4$ for the bulb and 1.5$ for ESP-M3. The main point is having a solution for whoever already got the bulb (or a bunch of them)
I have succesfully modified the hardware with ESP-12 (less than 1.5 euro) ,load tasmota and intergrade it to homeassistant. Of course it needs advanced soldering and electronics skills. I think ESP-M3 is better solution because its smaller but i just had spare ESP-12 and used them.
With the ESP12 and the cost of it, it’s very efficient! Thanks for the tip!
Does it fit properly? Does it sit in front of any leds? Is the light dissipation good?
If you have a photo of it would be great!
Ok with a link I’ve seen on the tasmota page for the bulbs, it’s hella cheap link
So with your solution , this esp brings the total cost to under 5$!
Even with the esp-m3 found here it barely goes over 5$.
I dare to say, for a person with soldering and programming knowledge, this is the best AND cheapest solution for a smart home. 5 bucks for a smart bulb with brightness control is next to nothing and we can do whatever we want with the tasmota firmware, denying all the cloud cr@p.
Dimitris, sorry to bother you again with questions, but how is your wiring? I see you have a bridge on the red wire and 2 resistors. Care to elaborate a bit? On the M3 that’s on the page, the guy just connects vcc, gnd and gpio4 to control. (Πατριδα ετσι?)
Pano you dont bother me and i am glad if i can help. The ESP-12 to be flashed and work stable needs some pins to keep high with pullup resistors. So i have soldered 10K resistors to these pins and Vcc. Its really great and cheap solution because these bulbs have really strong light at full power and with intergation with home assistant you can many any automation and also control them with voice commands through google assistant. I made some print screens with Tasmota menu to show you. (Ελλαδα για πάντα!)
Also thank you for the link in Ali Express. I didnt know that they had E14 version and i will need them too. I will try to use ESP-01 to see if it can work. The bulb need only one GPIO for PWM so maybe ESP-01 can work and it is much smaller. When i will have any news i will post.
UPDATE: I am new user so i cant have more than 3 posts in one topic so i edit this post for the update about ESP-01 version of these bulbs. So I just finished the ESP-01 version of these bulbs and tested with success. I used the GPIO2 for PWM pin.
