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More ESP8266 Hacking - LOHAS LED

Yes, I have hacked another ESP8266-based device. This time it’s the LOHAS WiFi Smart LED lightbulb.

These are really quite nice bulbs, and available on Amazon pretty cheaply. Internally there is your typical power supply, and a ring of LEDs. In the center is the main control circuit consisting of an ESP8266, 25Q80 1MB flash chip, and a pair of MY9231 3-channel LED drivers. The LEDs themselves are arranged as a channel of red, a channel of green, a channel of blue, and two channels of white. I have had one of these bulbs lighting my bedroom for some time now. While they’re not super bright they’re fine for that sort of environment - and I think they do brighter versions now as well.

Opening the bulbs is both easy and tricky. There are small clips holding the top cover on, but the plastic is so brittle you will break them. But the clips aren’t really what holds it together - it’s glued in with silicone. So it just sort of tears away. You’ll want to glue it back together after you are finished. I used a couple of small blobs of superglue and it seems to have done the trick.

Those guys at LOHAS have even provided nice little test pads for us to connect wires to for programming - and they have even gone as far as to label them! Nice people! Except one: the pad labelled as 3V3 isn’t. As far as I can tell it’s not actually connected to anything. So you will have to connect your 3.3V power to somewhere else if you need it. I chose one end of the output capacitor from the power supply.”

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