The hobbyist electronics market is still tiny, and even though random companies are coming out with some very interesting hardware, these parts and components aren’t exactly meant for us. The ESP8266 WiFi module is a slight deviation from this trend, with hundreds of different ESP dev boards floating around, and weirdos buying them by the bag.
[4ndreas] finally found the ESP8266 in a product; it’s not a very noteworthy observation until you realize how much work has gone into the development of open source toolchains for the ESP.
[4ndreas] found an RGB LED strip on Ali Express that could be controlled by WiFi. Inside, he found everyone’s favorite WiFi module, and by shorting two pins, he started up the controller in bootloader mode.
Because of the massive amount of open source development surrounding the ESP8266, there are a host of tools that can be used to program this cheap LED controller. [4ndreas] took a swing at writing his own firmware for the controller and came up with this project.
It’s not a killer project, but it does demonstrate the power of open source toolchains for cheap WiFi modules. This is only the first product found with an ESP8266 inside, but there are undoubtedly others out there just waiting to be taken apart and controlled in more advanced ways.
I wonder why didn’t they make Dash with the ESP? Was it released after they started development? (You know how sluggish big-ass companies are.) If I understand it, now a mic is used to configure wifi with an app.. But one could use flashes of light instead so no DSP would be needed.
Isn’t the ESP pretty power hungry? Maybe they went with a more power efficient chip.
But the button only needs to be active for the period immediately after pressing it…
Lots of people on http://www.esp8266.com using this in products, much talk about this and Everything ESP8266!
It’s a great tool for hobbyists and I can see it being used in some high power products but the thing is power hungry
I’m also curious about the security!
Same device, English site: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/rgb-WiFi-controller-1-port-control-15-rgb-lights-communicate-with-Android-phone-to-dim-output/32301423622.html
Well thanks to that first link, aliexpress is now stuck in spanish, even when I click on that english link. Thanks hackaday.
Top right, click “English | Global site”.
HAD editors only look at the pictures anyway.
Interestingly I put together such a board for my own use using an ESP8266 with a PCA9685 16 channel PWM module and AOI510 MOSFETs. Their board looks like it may use the same or similar hardware. It would have been great to have been able to buy this earlier! I wonder what protocol they use for communication, is it CoAP over UDP? or maybe MQTT over TCP? or some simple serial protocol?
Well I am basically building the same stuff too^^
Same here… Already have it assembled together, but without the 2 white channels. And impossible to bit that price with the casing! Damn ^^
Need to pick up some capacitor tonight to solve some reset issue. My unit is still much compacter and with a reset button (yes I need to self comfort me!)
I’m also building an RGB setup and all the aliexpress stuff I’d seen so far was far too expensive for how many controllers I needed. I wonder why they put two white channels on it? I guess if you have the extra I/O just do it. Too bad it doesn’t have one more channel. Then it could have supported 2 RGB’s.
I just noticed an issue though, it only supports 20W output. I have a 5m x 60 (5050, 0.2W) LED’s so I need 60W output. Guess I’m keeping with my 75W N-Channel Mosfets with heatsink.
Yeah, 20W it’s really not a lot… BTW I’ve just find out that my Mosfets was not sensitive enough for the esp8266 as the gate threshold is 2-4V… So if anybody want to build the same thing, don’t use IRFZ44N. It will work but only deliver very dimmed light…
I ordered some ITLZ44N and hope it’ll work this time!
(Concerning the reset error, I had to erase the memory using esptool.py to get it working…)
Concerning the extra white channel, I’ve seen on taobao the RGBW or RGBWW are getting very popular (one strip with RGB led + white led), I guess that’s why they implemented those two white channel.
BTW I’ve ordered my driver board on dirty PCB if anybody search an RGB board controlled by an ESP8266:
http://goo.gl/SGaeT9 (94W Mosfets so should be able to handle a lot of LED, and space has been left on the PCB to add some heatsink to them).
These are standard DPAK Mosfets. You can easily replace them with much stronger ones. E.g. BUK9217 is nice: about 10..20mOhms and 25 with 3V gate voltage. rated with 64Amps nominally.
It seems that they updated the product, now it is stated 96W per channel or max 4A per channel.
With a 12V strip it allows 48 watts per channel. Maybe still not enough for your project though.
They also posted high res photo of the board:
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/rgb-strip-WiFi-controller-1-port-control-15-rgb-lights-communicate-with-Android-phone-to-dim/32301423622.html
I setup a Wireshark sniffing setup (connected a spare accespoint to my PC and let this RGB box connect to it). I sniffed the traffic passing by for a while, when i was playing with the app (LEDDimmer.apk).
Actually the protocol used is just plain hex codes for each channel, sent over UDP port 30977. I managed to control the box from a Raspberry Pi. For now only basic commands (setting R or G, or B to full power and back for example) but i’m sure this has a lot of potential.
I have posted my findings here: http://www.domoticz.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=7957&p=54272#p54265
The problem I’m having is that when power on ESP8266 pulls HIGH on PIN 12 and 13 on for just a moment while it’s booting, and one time blink LED strip .
I’ve tried add internal pull-down resistor to no avail.
i found another tiny product with ESP8266 inside: http://www.ebay.com/itm/led-wifi-bulb-control-via-android-phone-esp8266-chip-built-in-rgbw-dimmable-bulb-/141960210547?hash=item210d7ce873:g:m0UAAOSwu1VW8PTB
Another equivalent bulb is available here:
https://authometion.com/shop/en/home/13-lyt8266.html
Thanks for the link :-)
Do you guys think that esp8266 is okay to embed into a commercial product? I see wemo kind of bit more pricey products use ralink which is a more expensive one.
I have esp8266 in my door control for more than a year and it’s been working great, never needed to restart it or it never put me in a situation where I couldn’t connect it or else..
thanks!
Using ESP8266:arduino. OTA works, but how do I secure from reading from device?
What do you mean by “reading”? Are you mentioning about reading firmware from your device? It means nothing because it’s compiled code. I’m sure that it’s not possible to convert it to source code. May be they can copy your device if they can read the firmware. But nothing more.
With the binary code, you can easily duplicate the product, and you can sell it in your own case. That’s how chinese manufacturers do…
But this is a connected product, so if the product is “copied” this means nothing because you have the same device with same address, connects to same server. Please make me clear.
It happens only if the application uses any custom id / cloud based. Any other cases, you just gave away your product to the Chinese market.