New Adventures in WiFi

I've recently been working on a smart, wifi-enabled irrigation or watering controller for my garden, and have finally got it up and running. I'll start with a picture of the finished product, so you know where this is heading. I had a few ideas for how to achieve this, and over the last few months I've been examining different options, and recently took the plunge and purchased some hardware. I've been doing a number of projects with ESP8266 based hardware, Tasmota firmware, and Home Assistant and so it was inevitable any solution I put in place would feature those elements.

A few months ago I purchased a Brilliant Smart Ceiling Fan Remote or Controller , with the intention of flashing Tasmota on it, and setting it up in Home Assistant . I needed to replace a ceiling fan in our lounge room, and so I also bought a Brilliant Tempest II ceiling fan , which I understood should be compatible with the fan controller. You can see a few photos below, but unfortunately I forgot to take any before I had disassembled the parts, so you'll need to check out the BrilliantSmart product page to see photos before disassembly. Here is the box... And the control panel with the cover removed... And the controller, also with the cover removed... Fortunately, thanks to some very   helpful   posts  and investigative work from sparkydave , thecubical and exxalmate  and posted on the  Australia - Electrically Certified Hardware thread  on the Home Assistant forums , I knew that this was a Tuya based device, with a secondary microco...

After having some recent success with the Brilliant RGB+W 20741 E27 globes , I decided to purchase the B22 version of (what I thought) was the same globe, the Brilliant WiFi A60 RGB+W 20699 B22 globe . You can see some images of the globe and box here. I followed the same process as with the 20741, flashing Tasmota using  tuya-convert , and attempting to use the  template for the 20741 in the repository . The 20741 template uses the following pin assignment: GPIO4 - PWM1 - red GPIO12 -  PWM2 -   green GPIO14 -  PWM3 -   blue GPIO5 -  PWM4 -   warm white To test the globe, I then tried cycling through the following commands in the Tasmota console to light each led: red: Color1 1 green: Color1 2 blue: Color1 3 white: White 100 After this test, the only response I saw from the globe was the white led was lit when I tried to set the globe to a green colour. This told me the 20741 template wasn't correct for this globe, but...

I've been running a Wemos D1 mini in a Frankenstein-like configuration over the past few weeks, with the aim of testing a few different temperature and humidity sensors. I've been trialling the following sensor types: DHT22 DHT11 BME280 SHT30 The breadboard with the sensors looks like this: You can see some graphs of a recent sample of readings from Grafana here: I'm actually a bit disappointed with how much variation there is between these sensors. Overall, I'm more confident in the readings from the DHT22 sensors, based on comparisons with some other temperature sensors I have in the house. The BME280 and SHT30 don't appear to be as accurate as I had hoped. The DHT11 is doing a reasonable job at the temperature readings, but the humidity is probably over-reading.

Today I made some changes to the rules that let the smart plugs running tasmota in the bathrooms turn on the fans. With these rules a short press turns on the fan, and a long press turns on the switch. Rule1 on switch1#state=3 do Power 2 endon Rule2 on switch1#state=2 do publish cmnd/sw_bri_03/POWER 2 endon Rule1 1 Rule2 1

I picked up a 3-pack of these Brilliant WiFi A60 RGB+W E27 globes from Aldi recently (Model Number 20741), with the intention of flashing them with Tasmota  and doing some experimentation in Home Assistant . Firstly, some photos of the bulb and box. I was able to easily flash these with Tasmota easily using tuya-convert , and fortunately there was a template available in the repository , meaning they were also easy to configure.  These globes are controlled via four separate PWM signals for the red, green, blue and white leds. There were also very good instructions on the Tasmota wiki for configuring the globes in Home Assistant.

I purchased one of these Brilliant Smart Elite Wall Switches  which arrived today.  I quickly pulled off the front glass panel and could see the upper surface of the low voltage board.  Fortunately the low voltage board was easily removable, revealing the high-voltage board beneath. The low voltage board  containing the ESP8266 chip on the underside is below. T here were a set of header pins which extended into the mains voltage part that I hoped would offer an easy solution for flashing.   The ESP8266 in this case is on an TYW3ES module which I think is commonly used in Tuya gear. Looking at the TYW3ES data sheet  I was able to identify the pins on the module.  I then did some continuity checks with a multimeter and was able to identify the VCC and GND pins on the header, but unfortunately not the TX or RX pins. I connected the VCC and GND pins to a 3.3V power supply using dupont cables,...

I ordered a couple of these AM312 PIR sensors from Banggood recently, to test using them in a multi-function sensor with Tasmota . There is some good information on configuring Tasmota with these sensors , and the manual can be found here . You can see an image of the sensor below, along with pin assignments. Thanks to the creator of this image; unfortunately I can't find the original source to offer credit, but am happy to do so if you reach out to me! These PIR modules simply behave as a switch. To experiment, I've simply connected the OUT pin to D2 (GPIO4) on a Wemos D1 Mini module, and have configured the LED on D4 (GPIO2) on the Wemos to turn on when the PIR sensor is triggered, as a visual indicator. You can see the setup on a small breadboard here. The configuration is Tasmota is here. Note that the LED is on D4 (GPIO2) but needs to be pulled high to turn the LED off, and pulled low to turn the LED on. Hence, the need to invert the signal using RelayX...

So, after successfully getting Tasmota running on some Sonoff S20 and S26 smart plugs  without soldering, and  without tuya-convert , I embarked up doing the same with some Brilliant Smart WiFi Plugs (Model 20676/05). I was keen to use these devices, as they are approved for use in Australia, having a Regulatory Compliance Mark (RCM) . The process I used involved disassembling the device, and using duPont cables held against the terminals on the ESP8266 module to establish a serial connection and flash the device. Here are some more details. The box for the plugs is shown below. And here are some images of the plug before disassembly. The cover of the smart plug can be removed by levering it up with a screwdriver or spudger or similar, and lifting it off. There are two screws that need to be removed from the main board in order to lift out the board and plug assembly. The board containing the ESP8266 module is attached to the main board. L...