Glen Akins Reverse Engineers Cheap "Smart" Lights for WLED Compatibility — So You Don't Have To

Maker Glen Akins has decided to smarten up his holiday lighting game, but eschews smart devices requiring a constant cloud connection in favor of rewiring them to work with a local Espressif ESP32 microcontroller and the WLED firmware.

"I’m always looking for new LED lights for Halloween, Christmas, and just general tinkering. My preference is for lights that can be modified to be controlled locally by WLED," Akins explains. "Controlling the lights locally lets me integrate the lights into larger displays and coordinate the colors of all the connected lights using software like xLights. I recently purchased a few sets of random LED lights from third-party sellers on Amazon."

Created by Christian Schwinne as a means to turn a low-cost Espressif ESP8266 or ESP32 microcontroller into a web server offering control of NeoPixel and selected SPI-based addressable LEDs, WLED runs entirely on-device and requires no connection outside the local network — and that only for providing its web interface for control of the connected LEDs.

Rather than buying bare LEDs, though, Akins decided to pick up a selection of low-cost "smart" lights — with the benefit of already having weather-proof housings. With an Olimex ESP32-Gateway board and a custom carrier which supplies power and data to the connected lights, Akins set about experimenting to see which ones could have their cloud connectivity disabled in favor of talking to the local WLED server instead.

"I hooked the ground and data out pins on the controller cable to an oscilloscope," Akins writes of his efforts to investigate how each of the devices works, starting with APPECK-branded pathway lights. "The waveform was the WS2811 protocol at 840kHz. To use these lights with WLED, the closest matching pixel type is SK6812 RGBW with RGB color ordering. Selecting this pixel type and color ordering in the LED Preferences panel will permit the pathway lights to use all of WLED’s built-in effects."

Akins then ran through a range of other lights with mixed results. An APPECK-brand set of spotlights turned out to use an unusual 80-bit control scheme incompatible with WLED, though controllable via sACN e1.31 and DDP; Lumary spotlights proved controllable, but only by sending 100 pixels-worth of data for just six lights in the string; ALFELE-branded floodlights were again fully compatible, no trickery required.

"Based on my experience with these four light sets, if a light set meets the following guidelines, it likely uses the WS281x control protocol and could be hacked to work with WLED," Akins advises for those looking to set up their own WLED-controlled lighting on the cheap. "Look for low-voltage lights only; no line-powered lights. Look for an AC adapter followed by a separate controller followed by a string of lights. Look for lights where there’s a three-pin connector between the AC adapter or controller and the first light on the string. Look for light strings where each light can be set to a different color simultaneously. Look for lights with an app."

Akins' full write-up is available on his blog, along with a table of settings required to get the lights running with WLED.