Flash Tasmota firmware to Brilliant Smart bulbs with Tuya Convert

I picked up a cheap smart bulb from Officeworks yesterday for only AUD$14 to see if I could flash it using tuya-convert and therefore remove any dependency to the cloud. This post shows how to do it from start to finish and provides the Tasmota device templates required for this particular smart bulb.

All home automation devices on my network should run open source firmware that works locally wihtout sending data to cloud services. The added benefit of this very low latency (fast responsiveness) and knowing that your usage data is not being recorded by some company elsewhere.

The different components explained

Raspberry Pi 4: Everyone has one lying around. The built-in Wifi chip in RPi v4 supports access point mode which is required to create a Wifi hotspot for the ioT device toconnect to.

Tuya Convert: This is a firmware flashing tool to hack common IoT devices such as light bulbs and power plugs. It tricks the IoT device into thinking the proprietary mobile app is talking to it. This works for tuya based devices. In all likelihood, your device will work. My light bulb was not on the support device list, but I managed to figure out how to write a custom template for it (see end of post).

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Tasmota: This is excellent firmware for IoT devices. Some 20 devices on my network run on this firmware and it is very responsive and above all — reliable. I dabbled with ESPYaml in the past (post embedded below), but can no longer recommend it since the Tasmota firmware is much more stable, feature-rich and reliable. Not to mention, firmware upgrades can be handled in bulk using TasmoAdmin.

Flashing Smart bulbs using Tuya Convert

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Tips and tricks for Flashing Over the Air

• Keep the Raspberry Pi and device you want to flash close together. I found that flashing across rooms does not work. It needs a strong connection.
• Stay close to the router… I know this is a common tip but I ignored it and wasted time because of it. Flashing is very susceptible to corruption when the signal strength is low.

Setting up a Tasmota template

Get Tasmota Template for your device from their database. If you device is not listed (like mine) follow along to figure it out yourself.

My device was not listed, the internal circuit board is labelled with EBA606 REV1.1 V1.1 and E199273 PAL-3A W 94V-0 as shown below on the right. The model name on the box is Brilliant Smart Wifi A60 globe White 20890.

I googled a little bit and found this issue talking about a similar device labelled EBA882-REV1.1. The supplied template worked for my bulb but had some extra RGB stuff that is not applicable because mine only supports warm white and dimming. (IMHO that is all you really need long term and is much better compared to RGB bulbs in terms of color reproduction.)

Modified Template for Brilliant 20890

Supplied Template (works but with extra controls that don't apply);

{"NAME":"OM60/RGBW","GPIO":[255,255,255,255,140,37,0,0,38,142,141,255,255],"FLAG":0,"BASE":18}

Modified Template for Brilliant 20890 (see screenshot below)
{"NAME":"Brilliant 20890","GPIO":[0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,37,0,0,0,0],"FLAG":0,"BASE":18}

Tasmota Configuration

Use the following Backlog command in Tasmota device Admin interface to configure the device. Leave Hostname %s as is, it will then take the MQTT topic as host name (in my case son_kitchen_bulb.)

Backlog Hostname %s; FriendlyName Kitchen Bulb; MqttHost serverbox; MqttUser sonoff_user; Topic son_kitchen_bulb;

Home Assistant Integration

All my Tasmota based LED lights are single-color, dimmable lights. The following mqtt light configuration should make this work well in Home Assistant.

- platform: mqtt
  name: Toilet Light
  state_topic: "stat/son_toilet_bulb/RESULT"
  command_topic: "cmnd/son_toilet_bulb/POWER"
  state_value_template: ""
  brightness_state_topic: "stat/son_toilet_bulb/RESULT"
  brightness_command_topic: "cmnd/son_toilet_bulb/Dimmer"
  brightness_value_template: ""
  brightness_scale: 100
  payload_on: "ON"
  payload_off: "OFF"

Conclusion

How did you go? Please leave any questions in the comments below.