TUYA LED bulbs

Hardware
1

Hi All
I feel I’m going round in circles - I bought an “E27 RGB WiFi Smart Bulb 10W Tuya Color Changing LED Light with Alexa Google Home” from EBAY and followed the directions (including ensuring everything else was off/disconnected) from https://everythingsmarthome.co.uk/howto/flashing-any-smart-bulb-plug-or-switch-with-tuya-convert/

The process failed, and the logs say
“WARNING: it appears this device does not use an ESP82xx and therefore cannot install ESP based firmware”

I understood that all tuya based lights used esp82xx chips ?

Has anyone got a recommendation for a supplier of a flashable led bulb ?

Cheers

2

That is not true. You messed something up. SONOFF devices use ESP based chips and can be flashed with ESPHome or Tasmota. I guess Tuya devices use a Broadcom chip. You can still connect the Devices to the Tuya cloud and connect the cloud to HomeAssistant.

3

Hi Gian
Thanks for the prompt reply - I am happy with sonoff devices and have successfully flashed several with ESP firmware.
What I’m struggling with is trying to obtain an LED bulb that I can flash and control with homeassistant directly (i.e. without needing an external cloud connection or an app from the play store ) I understood that tuya-concert was able to do this, but only with ESP based bulbs.

Have I missed something ?
Cheers

4

What I personally use are the magic home LED bulbs. They use a cloud but only passively. Homeassistant can communicate directly via ip over them and as far as i’ve seen, they also use ESP chips so you could flash Tasmota onto them

5

Thanks, I’ll check them out, but my preference is to keep everything ‘in house’ where possible. I can’t understand why Sonoff devices, which also default to a cloud based app can be reflashed to be directly controlled by homeassistant, whereas this seems less possible for LED lightbulbs.

6

It’s because the Tuya LED bulbs don’t use an ESP chip. They use a Broadcom chip.

I prefer Lifx for locally controlled lights, no flashing required. Not cheap though.

Some alternatives:

7

Most/some current available Tuya bulbs can be flashed with Tuya Convert (afterwards use either Tasmota or ESPHome). However, there might be cases where the bulbs cannot be flashed as the chipset used is not ESP8266/8285 or they’re using newer Tuya firmware that is not yet hackable without invasive measures such as dismantling the bulb and connecting FTDI cable.

See list of compatible lights (but it doesn’t guarantee that the respective device firmware is hackable; AFAIK, might be wrong, but in April 2020 Tuya introduced the newer firmware, thus MFR dates before 2020 would most likely indicate a compatible device; if shopping in a brick and mortar store then you might look at the packaging to identify MFR date, otherwise it might be a little hit and miss):

1 Like
8

that’s what I thought - maybe I’ve been unlucky, but the tuya-convert script reported:

payload D709619CF60E64EED4481CA4E55223C4
WARNING: it appears this device does not use an ESP82xx and therefore cannot install ESP based firmware
Answer tuya.device.dynamic.config.get

I’m as certain as I can be that there is nothing else on on my network, but will try again…

9

Screen output from start_flash.sh

=====================================================
Starting smart config pairing procedure
Waiting for the device to install the intermediate firmware
Put device in EZ config mode (blinking fast)
Sending SSID vtrust-flash
Sending wifiPassword
Sending token 00000000
Sending secret 0101
…
SmartConfig complete.
Resending SmartConfig Packets
…
SmartConfig complete.
Resending SmartConfig Packets
…
SmartConfig complete.
Resending SmartConfig Packets
…
SmartConfig complete.
Resending SmartConfig Packets
…
SmartConfig complete.
Resending SmartConfig Packets
…
SmartConfig complete.
Resending SmartConfig Packets
…
SmartConfig complete.
Resending SmartConfig Packets
…
SmartConfig complete.
Resending SmartConfig Packets
…
SmartConfig complete.
Resending SmartConfig Packets
…^C…
SmartConfig complete.
Resending SmartConfig Packets
…
Device did not appear with the intermediate firmware
Check the *.log files in the scripts folder
Do you want to try flashing another device? [y/N] ======================================================
Cleaning up…
Closing AP
Exiting…

output from smarthack-web.log
payload F96F5C909E4B3DDB1805EBBF80729050
WARNING: it appears this device does not use an ESP82xx and therefore cannot install ESP based firmware
Answer tuya.device.dynamic.config.get

10

You haven’t posted the brand. Are your bulbs included in the list of Tasmota compatibles?

11

I recently purchased a matching brand/bulb that in the past was using the esp chip, however even though its the same the manufactor definawetly changed the chip to a non-esp one.

Still uses the ‘smartlife’ app, but no longer flashable… Kind of a bummer cuase they were the cheapest in store option for bulbs at $9.97 at walmart. lol

but yeah. RIP merkury bulbs/outlets.

12

As others have pointed out, Tuya devices have undergone some changes this year. First they patched the exploit in their firmwares this past summer that Tuya-Convert used. Most recently they’ve been producing devices that no longer use the esp82xx chipset, so even serial flashing is now out. Personally I’m hoping for a sliver of a chance that the switch is temporary. Perhaps a chip vendor supply shortage in China from the pandemic or something forced them to switch until manufacturing is back to full production? Hey a person can dream… odds are though that this is an intentional hardware change, and we’ll be out of luck until new custom firmwares and flashing techniques are developed. :frowning:

13

So you can still find Merkury bulbs in store that are flashable with tuya convert. I shopped around and found bulbs labeled on the bottom “Merkury Inovations 2019” successfully flashed and used these with Esphome. Good luck.

1 Like
14

I suppose you could. in my area all the bulbs and outlets were sold out for like 4 months… so they are all the new stock around me.

For what its worth. the newer non-flashable ones are very, very lightweight. just feeling the package you’d be able to tell.

15

Not necessarily an indicator of the newer chipset. I have some Feit RGB bulbs from late 2019… some from Costco and some from Lowes (look identical but different part numbers). The Lowes bulbs are SIGNIFICANTLY lighter than the ones I got from Costco, but both were flashable via Tuya-Convert.

1 Like
16

I am looking for a long lasting product for tuya flash-ables. I just bought a Gosund bulbs and after not flashing learned Gosund had reprogrammed the bulbs to turn off when it sees it is getting flashed other than Gosund flash. So now I am suspecting many other companies doing the same thing. I am thinking I may look for Sonoff items going forward.
Now I just found this write up on the subject:
https://tasmota.github.io/docs/Tuya-Convert/