Chinese esp bulb

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Cliff Karlsson

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Jan 10, 2016, 4:09:27 PM1/10/16
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I have a couple of crappy Chinese rgb bulbs that I just noticed are using esp chip. 

Is there any tutorial on how to flash souliss firmware on the bulb? 

20160110_213315.jpg

Di Maio, Dario

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Jan 10, 2016, 4:16:35 PM1/10/16
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Hi Cliff,

you need to find the RX, TX and GPIO0 pins and apply the same procedure as all the other ESP8266 based devices, also a mapping of the pins to the LED will be required.

WTF, they are driving the LEDs in current (see the inductors) instead of voltage, if they have a good AC/DC those could be really low power devices while dimmed.

Dario.


On Sun, Jan 10, 2016 at 10:09 PM, Cliff Karlsson <silverc...@gmail.com> wrote:
I have a couple of crappy Chinese rgb bulbs that I just noticed are using esp chip. 

Is there any tutorial on how to flash souliss firmware on the bulb? 

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Di Maio, Dario

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Jan 10, 2016, 4:35:59 PM1/10/16
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I've tried searching on the web for this type of ESP8266 based modules without success, so we have few ways to have a try:

The GND should be quite easy to get, is the black wire. If you have an USB to TTL Serial module you can connect the GND and look for the TX pin of the module listening for data while the ESP8266 boots. On the bottom of the module (referring the antenna as top) there are some solder pads, one of these il likely the TX.

The RX will be near the TX if we are lucky but I don't know how we can find the GPIO0.

If you have very good soldering skills and tools, you can solder some temporary wires to the ESP8266 directly, so that you can load a first sketch with OTA and then proceed with all the modification that you want.

Where have you bought this module? Have those a brand?

Dario.

MeroFilosofo

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Jan 10, 2016, 7:31:33 PM1/10/16
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Did you see the conector marked as J1? I marked it with a circle. upload a simple webserver sketch that can handle all gpio, and try to turn it on and off to search the gpios, then is easy to make a souliss sketch

Di Maio, Dario

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Jan 11, 2016, 1:33:10 AM1/11/16
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Good point!

So the three pins at J1 are probably GPIO0, RX and TX in an order that we don't know. Those three plus the GND and VCC gives what is required to program the ESP8266.

You don't have to power the bulb from the mains.

Try to load any sketch for ESP8266 like this

https://github.com/souliss/souliss/tree/friariello/examples/LYTBulb/e02_LYT8266_WiFi_Bulb
Regards,
Dario.

From Mobile.

Di Maio, Dario

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Jan 11, 2016, 1:34:48 AM1/11/16
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What's the tag of the IC just near the read circle by Mero?

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Cliff Karlsson

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Jan 11, 2016, 5:51:34 AM1/11/16
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Ok thanks for the info. I found it on AliExpress and it is a clone of clone I think. I can provide a link later but the name of the original clone is vstarcam af820 or something like that. 

Here is a better pic. 
20160111_062053.jpg

Di Maio, Dario

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Jan 11, 2016, 6:30:09 PM1/11/16
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Hi Cliff,

is this your lamp?
http://www.vstarcam.com/AF820-Smart-Light-141.html

Have a try on J1 is very likely to be the connector pins that you are looking for.

Dario.

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Marko S

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Jan 12, 2016, 6:49:25 AM1/12/16
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If I understand correctly he says he is using a clone of this vstarcam bulb.

Dne torek, 12. januar 2016 00.30.09 UTC+1 je oseba Dario Di Maio napisala:

Steve [Souliss]

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Feb 3, 2016, 7:46:50 AM2/3/16
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I did have a search but didn't find anything further, so forgive me if
this has already been covered.

I purchased two of these bulbs, Vstarcam af820 originals. The PCBs look
similar to the photos Cliff posted but with some minor layout differences.

The programming connector J1 goes into a microcontroller (ST 8s003f3p6
"Value line, 16 MHz STM8S 8-bit MCU, 8 Kbyte Flash, 128 byte data
EEPROM, 10-bit ADC, 3 timers, UART, SPI, I²C") and NOT into the ESP8266.
I haven't done any testing but at a guess the ESP is being used in
AT-command mode.

There is an internal PSU within the main body presumably providing a low
voltage to the main PCB which also contains a 3.3V regulator for the ESP
module The 4 channels are each driven by PT4115 LED drivers that dim
according to PWM signals.

No idea why the ESP alone couldn't handle everything. The LED drivers
operate on a supply voltage of 6-30V but the DIM input is specifically
TTL and the Vdim_h is >2.5V so compatible with 3.3V logic.

Had anyone managed to look any further at these? I might remove the
micro and break out the ESP to drive the LEDs.

Steve

Steve [Souliss]

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Feb 9, 2016, 1:53:32 PM2/9/16
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I'm somewhat surprised nobody else is looking at the Vstarcam AF820 RGBW
LED wifi bulbs.

I guess everybody is using the LYT-8266 instead...

Steve

Di Maio, Dario

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Feb 9, 2016, 2:00:27 PM2/9/16
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That lamp isn't designed to be re-programmed and likely isn't easy to find.

Dario.

Steve [Souliss]

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Feb 10, 2016, 4:32:13 AM2/10/16
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No, they are not designed to be re-programmed I agree. They are easy to
find though as they're all over ebay for half the price of the LYT8266...

They do have an ESP8266 internally which appears to communicate with a
separate microcontroller (presumably using AT commands) that does the
PWM to the LEDs. I can see removal of the micro, some jumper wires, and
re-programming the ESP8266 in my future :)

Cliff Karlsson

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Feb 27, 2016, 4:55:44 PM2/27/16
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Sorry for the slow response, but I fiddled around little with the bulbs and after connecting it to the wifi using the crappy chinese e4home app. I have managed to send some commands to it. Maybe some of you brainiacs could compose some kind of script or similar to be able to control it a little more easy.

Send a UDP packet to the Ip of the bulb and the port 5880 (I don't know if the port is the same for all bulbs)

with this similar "data":

55 aa 00 31 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 14 31 a1 00 00 00 00 20 00 03 00 00 18 37 34 c7 00 00 00 00 01 e7 00 0c 00 00 00 00 29 c9 00 00 00 00 01 2c 01 2c

I suck at this kind of stuff but the underlined part ( and probably some part to the right of the underlined part)  seems to be a hex value for the color. I have had some problems getting the same color as the one i expected from the hex value I change it to so I am guessing that you specify one, two or three hex values and the colormix is the result. I have not had the time to figure that one out.

Di Maio, Dario

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Feb 27, 2016, 5:54:42 PM2/27/16
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You should probably use the openHAB UDP binding once decoded the protocol.

Dario.

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Glenn Schmottlach

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Mar 19, 2016, 2:20:28 PM3/19/16
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Has there been any progress deciphering the protocol used by this LED bulb? I'm not so concerned about loading custom firmware on it but would like some means to integrate it with openHAB or my own application to implement customer rules/behaviors. As has been noted, it's significantly cheaper than many competitors.

Thanks . . .

Di Maio, Dario

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Mar 19, 2016, 2:29:49 PM3/19/16
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I don't think that here someone has interest in reversing that protocol. Is easier load Souliss and integrate within openHAB.

Dario.

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Glenn Schmottlach

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Mar 19, 2016, 3:13:00 PM3/19/16
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So has someone loaded custom firmware then on the Bulb itself? I thought it only used the ESP8266 for WiFi access rather than controlling the bulb. I assume, short of replacing the firmware on the secondary processor, figuring out the protocol was the most straightforward way to control this bulb with openHab?

Di Maio, Dario

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Mar 19, 2016, 4:08:23 PM3/19/16
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It may be, but I haven't seen any progress on this topic.

Dario.

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Glenn Schmottlach

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Jul 24, 2016, 5:03:15 PM7/24/16
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For those of you who may still be interested in controlling the VStarCam AF820 Smart Light. . .

Although I have had no success programming the ESP-8266 directly on the VStarCam AF820 Smart Light itself, I have had some luck deciphering the protocol used to communicate with it. I have created a Node.js project that you can use to control the bulb (via MQTT) and also documented what I know/understand of the protocol. Perhaps this will benefit someone interested in integrating the bulb into an IoT network.

The project can be found here:


Have Fun!

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