Consmart/Triones/Flyidea BLE smart lights to MQTT bridge

Warning: crazy spaghetty code ahead

Exposes Triones Bluetooth smart lights over MQTT.

It seems to work, reconnection does not however, due to a bug in go-bluetooth.

As a workaround it currently exits when one device disconnects, you can restart it. Use persistent messages when publishing control messages so changes are applied when it's back up.

Notes on Bluez

Bluez requires a small patch for some lights to work. In fact they do not comply with the GATT protocol and send an error with a 0 error code, which bluez does not know how to handle.

The patch simply makes it ignore the error, it should work just fine. The bluez team is still discussing how to handle such misbehaving devices.

Notes on Raspberry Pi

Before we start, I want you to be aware of this: Raspberry Pi is the worst thing humanity ever pulled off, the worst SBC on Earth, you should sell it or return it to Amazon ASAP and get a RockPro64 instead.

Let that sink in.

Really. If Broadcom makes something, you already know how stable it's going to be. But the guys at Raspberry Pi didn't think it was unstable enough, so they decided it was a good idea to use an SD card as the one and only storage device of the computer. That thing is a horrible nightmare and you should burn it.

That being said, I implemented a workaround in order to reset the Bluetooth chip when it goes woo-woo. It works on Arch Linux ARM with the mainline aarch64 kernel, it might need changes for other kernels.

make raspi-mainline-reset-bt
make suid

Then add reset_prog as shown below to the configuration. The reset program will be called if needed right before the program exits after failure.

Configuration

---
#bluetooth:
#  adapter: "hci2"                  # only needed if you don't want the default adapter
#  reset_prog: "path/to/executable" # helper to reset Bluetooth in case it goes crazy

mqtt:
  mountpoint: "kitchen/lights"
  servers:
    - 'tcp://localhost:1883'
    #- 'tcp://otherserver:1883'
    #- 'ws://websocket:80'
  client_id: 'blelight2mqtt'
  #username: "user"
  #password: "password"
  #tls:  # do not add section if you don't want TLS
  #  insecure_skip_verify: false

devices:
  'DE:AD:BE:EF:D0:0D':
    mountpoint: 'friendly_name/'

Usage

Building

go build

Running

./consmart-ble-mqtt config.yml

MQTT topics

Control

The light can be controlled by writing to topics under {global_mountpoint}/{device_mountpoint}/control. There are 3 topics:

`control/power`

on/off

`control/color`

Takes an RGB color in the form R,G,B, for example 250,134,17 is a warm white.

Channels can go up to 255, 255,255,255 is white.

When saturation is zero (that is when all channels are set to the same value), the light is set to use the dedicated white LEDs. White LEDs are brighter than the RGB ones.

When the color is set to 0,0,0, the light is turned off.

`control/mode`

Takes a value in the form light_mode,speed.

Available modes are:

smooth rainbow
pulsating red
pulsating green
pulsating blue
pulsating yellow
pulsating cyan
pulsating magenta
pulsating white
pulsating red/green
pulsating red/blue
pulsating green/blue
rainbow strobe
red strobe
green strobe
blue strobe
yellow strobe
cyan strobe
magenta strobe
white strobe
hard rainbow

Bonus modes (not available in the app, but implemented by the lights):

pulsating RGB
RGB strobe
hard RGB

Speed can go from 1 to 31, and is inversely proportional. That is when it's set to 1 it's fast, when it's set to 31 you can barely see it changing.

Don't ask me about it, ask the guys who made these shitty lights.

Example: smooth rainbow,3

Status

Status is reported to {global_mountpoint}/{device_mountpoint}/status.

Format is the same as the control channels but with a few exceptions:

Mode may also report white and rgb, which are not settable with the control topic. In order to set it to white mode, set the color to a color with no saturation (such as white). In order to set it to RGB mode, simply set a color.

When in white or rgb mode, the speed is not reported (it doesn't really make any sense).

When a mode is enabled, the color changes are also reported as well roughly every second.

Unsupported features

There are some extra features that the lights support that have not been implemented:

Clock/date setting (for auto on/off)
Auto on/off
"Passcode"
- Yes, apparently if you reverse-engineer the app you can see that the SDK they used supports setting a 4-digit passcode. It is unclear how it actually works, it doesn't seem to be the Bluetooth pairing code, also it seems to me that it might be resettable without even providing it. It looks like if the passcode is set it tries to use one that's stored somewhere on the phone, but if it fails it tries to reset it. 🤷 If this is not true it might actually be useful to make sure your neighbors don't have fun with your lights, but luckily my neighbors are not that techy.

Troubleshooting

`unable to retrieve RGB characteristic for '...'`

Have you rebuilt Bluez with my patch applied? See Notes on Bluez

`unable to check whether services were resolved for '...'`

That's usually not an issue, it sometimes takes up to 30 seconds to connect to a lightbulb.

If it doesn't connect after waiting a minute or so, try removing power to the lights for a few seconds and see if they come back to life.

`Input/output error`

Your Bluetooth adapter is stuck. If you're using a Raspberry Pi, see Notes on Raspberry Pi for a workaround that doesn't involve rebooting it.

Otherwise reboot or unplug-replug the adapter and restart the program.

Program exits after lights disconnect

If lights decide it's time for a break, or you remove power from the lights, the program will try to handle it by exiting.

That is because the go-bluetooth library that's used under the hood never stops listening for notifications from the lights even after they disconnect, causing a deadlock.

It will try to exit so you can have something else (i.e. a script or systemd) restart it, and a new connection attempt will be performed.

Lights stop responding but they're still connected

I haven't had many chances to debug this because it always happens after many hours. That usually goes away after power-cycling the lights externally and restarting the program.

I'm pretty sure this is the lights fault. I already regret buying these lights so if you want some reliable lights, get the IKEA ones. They're 4 times as expensive but they work like a charm.

I'm also working with some friends to build a modded dimmer and use it as a cheap zigbee2mqtt-compatible gateway. We're still at early stages but check that out: https://github.com/tradfree-mod

depau/consmart-ble-mqtt