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.
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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.
On next picture you can see the pins you need to flash and operate the ESP-12. For operation you need the following connections:
VCC ----> 3.3V
GND ----> Ground
EN ----> HIGH (3.3V)
GPIO2 ----> HIGH (3.3V)
GPIO15 ----> LOW (GND)
GPIO0 ----> HIGH or Floating
For flashing you need to keep LOW the GPIO0 while you power the module.
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Thanks a lot for that! It looks quite a job for that. If you order first time, it’d be better to just order a m3 and do a direct job with minimum soldering. Other than that, it’s a top job and I’ve just ordered 3 m3 to do that! (I’ve got 2 techlife bulbs, but at that cost, I’ll probably fill the house with them)
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. The only way to get them working is to replace the chip inside them. This requires experience with a soldering iron!!!
The bulb is very easy to open, you just pull the plastic cap and pops open. Inside, the first thing you’ll see is the chip. Unsolder that and solder an ESP one AFTER you’ve flashed it with Tasmota. ESP m3 is the one requiring minimum soldering skills (check here), but you can also use ESP-12 and look at @badi posts in this topic as to how to wire it up. Other ESP may or may not fit inside the bulb or “hide” some leds and therefore you may lose brightness and full coverage.
Dont know if you guys noticed, but updated my openhab post about these. I have mine fully working only with software. Another user posted c++ code to dim them, so i created some scripts that i use in openhab. Im pretty sure its usable in homeassistant aswell, i just dont know how 
Fell free to check it out. No soldering required, but you can only send commands from the server, and you dont get any feedback. For my application, that is just fine. I use them mostly for cheap motion detection in washing room etc etc.
Hi…their cloud is?–> cloud.qh-tek.com
I will try to redirect your traffic to cloud.qh-tek.com towards my dns and use mqtt in HA
Chimo
Hello all,
I hate to hijack a thread, but I just want to mention that using the referenced OpenHAB thread, I was able to put together a simple solution for these light bulbs that does not include opening them or soldering.
The solution has a few easy-to-setup parts.
- Modify your router DNS config to point the TechLife Pro server URLs to your local MQTT server. This means that when the light bulbs try to connect and listen to their MQTT server, they’ll actually be listening to your local server.
- Set up your MQTT server to support the username/password hardcoded into the light bulbs’ firmware. If not, the bulbs won’t be able to connect or listen properly.
- Set up a script on your HA server responsible for sending commands to the bulbs. Add the script to your
configuration.yamlfile. I managed to merge the scripts in the other thread (Python and C) into one single script, which simplifies things somewhat. -
Connect the light bulb to your 2.4GHz Wifi network.
There is no need to install the TechLife app to do this! Instead, use a simple Python script to accomplish this.
It takes less than 10 seconds to screw in a bulb, connect to its network, and run the script. At this point, the bulb will reboot and connect to your Wifi network and start listening for MQTT commands.
Take note of the output that the script spits out, this is your bulb’s MAC address, which you’ll need for the final step. -
Add the bulb to your
configuration.yamlfile. You will need its MAC address to do this.
You should now have a light entity in HA that is 100% controlled locally. I have 4 such bulbs at the moment, and they work great.
If anyone is interested, I’ll write up a better howto in a new thread, complete with scripts and examples.
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Hi!!! please, give me your full instruction
I have re-edited first post and topic to show the 2 possible solutions on how to use them with links and ups and downs. Thanks everyone for their solutions!
I’ve personally tasmotised the 2 bulbs I had with esp-m3. It was about 10 minutes job per bulb with the flashing process. Went that route for the true local management, OTA updates, HA discovery(no code needed) and frankly, the cost is still dirt cheap even with the ESP.
Hi Guys,
I have gone the hardware way around this issue, replaced the broadlink module with an ESP-12F based module with custom PCB and now the bulb is open source.
If anyone is interested, here are some more details:
http://diy.viktak.com/2020/05/broadlink-smart-bulb-conversion-to-open.html
It’s not difficult at all if you have some basic soldering skills.
I create a custom component to control techlife RGB lights .I revive this topic for anyone who needs the information.
I’m working to make it work with white light as well:
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