pytrionesmqtt

MQTT to BTLE Triones LED lights written in Python

Background

Triones make some kind of generic LED controller which is found in many low cost LED lights on Amazon, such as this one I bought for my kids.

They come with a typical cheapo membrane IR remote, but what I didnt realise when I bought it was that they also provide a BTLE interface and an app called HappyLighting. When I read the box more carefully and saw "Bluetooth" I figured this was worth investigating more.

Luckily I didn't have to sniff the BTLE traffic as Madhead has already done all the hard work. The protocol is defined in good detail here: https://github.com/madhead/saberlight/blob/master/protocols/Triones/protocol.md

I still had a poke around in the BTLE services to see what was what. A simplified service map looks like this:

Based on Madhead's work and poking around we can reach the following conclusions about the BTLE service:

The main service used is 0xFFD5
The main write characteristic is 0xFFD9
The device is generally "fire and forget" - don't expect to get timely acknowledgements from the controller
The "status" service responds from 0xFFD4
There are a number of statically defined "commands"
There is an easily understood pattern to the more dynamic commands (set colour, etc)

What this code does

Connects to an existing MQTT server
Listens for commands on a topic
Issues status updates on a different topic
Expects and produces JSON formatted payloads
Supports multiple instances on the same MQTT server. You can run this script on more than one device and they'll try and share the work. This is useful for reaching out of the way devices.

How to use it

Prerequisites
- bluepy https://github.com/IanHarvey/bluepy (Install the version from the master branch, it has some important fixes to the helper c file which make everything better.)
  - python3 -m pip install git+https://github.com/IanHarvey/bluepy.git
  - If you don't want to run as root you need to do: sudo setcap 'cap_net_raw,cap_net_admin+eip' bluepy-helper where bluepy-helper is the file which is built when you install bluepy from Git.
- paho-mqtt
  - python3 -m pip install paho-mqtt
Your life might be made easier if you install the above in a venv
Configure your MQTT server and topic information
- The default subscription topic for controlling the lights is triones/control and the default reporting topic is triones/status.
- To change this, edit the code. These are defined right up the top.
You will need to know the MAC address of your device. There is a scanner class included which can help you find your devices. Simply run the script with --scan.
To get the status of your device send a JSON payload to the control topic:
- Send to triones/control the payload {"mac":"aa:bb:cc:11:22:33", "status":true}
- Receive : example TODO
To set your lights to red:
- Send to triones/control the payload {"mac":"aa:bb:cc:11:22:33, "rgb": [255,0,0]}
To power on your lights:
- Send to triones/control the payload {"mac":"aa:bb:cc:11:22:33, "power":true}

If you are running this on a Pi with Python version 3.5 you will need to import support for f strings in to your venv. e.g. pip install future-fstrings and also insert this as line 2: # -*- coding: future_fstrings -*-

Things still to do

There is minimal validation on anything
Add support for modes
Probably doesn't deal with devices going away very well
Test it

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