MagicBlue - Control your Magic Blue bulbs over bluetooth

The Magic Bulb is, as far as I know, the cheapest bluetooth RGB light bulb on the market : you can get it for as low as ~8€/9$ on sites like Gearbest. It works pretty good and comes with mobile apps.

Unfortunately I haven't found any API or documentation for it, which is why I started this project.

I haven't fully retro-engineered the protocol yet so it's not complete but Characteristics list page and How to use manually with Gatttool page should give you enough details to start working on your own implementation if you need to port this for another language / platform. On the research/bluetooth branch you'll also find capture of bluetooth packets exchanged between Android and the bulb (open hci_capture.log with Wireshark).

Tested on Linux and Raspberry Pi. I'll be happy to get your feedback on other platforms !

There are multiple versions of the bulb, some of them may need development to be compatible with this project. If you have a different bulb version you can try to sniff bluetooth communications. Reverse-engeeniring information and pull requests are more than welcome 😺

Bulb Version	v7	v8	v9	v10
Status	☑️	☑️	☑️	☑️

Installation

HomeAssistant

If you want to use this project with HomeAssistant you'll need to install magicblue as described below then use the component available here : https://github.com/xiaohuim/homeassistant-magicblue

Linux

You must use python 3+ and have a proper Bluetooth 4.0 interface installed on your machine.

Prerequisite
- Debian: sudo apt-get install libglib2.0-dev
- Fedora: sudo dnf install glib2-devel
Install

sudo pip3 install magicblue

⚠️ If you get the error No such file or directory: '/usr/local/lib/python3.4/dist-packages/bluepy/bluepy-helper' or ERROR:magicblue.magicblueshell:Unexpected error with command "ls": [Errno 8] Exec format error : This is a known bug in bluepy that sometimes doesn't get compiled when installed from Pypi on Raspberry Pi. You can fix it by compiling the helper yourself : Go to the lib folder (usually /usr/local/lib/python3.4/dist-packages/bluepy-1.1.0-py3.5.egg/bluepy/ but could be different, especially if you're using a virtual env) and run sudo make (make should be enought for a virtual env)
Raspberry Pi specifics

Follow the Debian procedure. If it doesn't work (unstable devices listing, commands have no effect) but you're sure that your bulb has a correct version (check the official app for that) then try updating bluez to the latest version. You can follow this post for more info.

Usage

Library needs elevated permissions to use Bluetooth features. You can either run as root (required for magicblueshell), or give hcitool special capabilities (see next section.)

If you run into problems during devices listing or connect, try to follow this procedure to ensure your Bluetooth interface works correctly : How to use manually with Gatttool page

Giving hcitool capabilities

You can give hcitool capabilities by installing and using the libcap library/commands.

On most Debian systems, including Raspbian/Raspberry Pi

sudo apt-get install libcap2-bin
sudo setcap 'cap_net_raw,cap_net_admin+eip' `which hcitool`

Fedora

sudo dnf install libcap
sudo setcap 'cap_net_raw,cap_net_admin+eip' `which hcitool`

Using it as an API

>>> from magicblue import MagicBlue

>>> bulb_mac_address = 'XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX'
>>> bulb = MagicBlue(bulb_mac_address)
>>> bulb.connect()
>>> bulb.set_color([255, 0, 0])         # Set red
>>> bulb.set_random_color()             # Set random
>>> bulb.turn_off()                     # Turn off the light
>>> bulb.turn_on()                      # Set white light

Using it as a tool

Script must be run as root.

You can always specify which bluetooth adapter (default: hci0) you want to use by specifying it with the -a option.

Also don't forget to specify your bulb version with -b if it's something else than 7. Example : sudo magicblueshell -b 10 to run with version 10

Using the interactive shell

Just launch magicblueshell as root user :

$ sudo magicblueshell
Magic Blue interactive shell v0.3.0
Type "help" for a list of available commands
> help
 ----------------------------
| List of available commands |
 ----------------------------
COMMAND         PARAMETERS                    DETAILS
-------         ----------                    -------
help                                          Show this help
list_devices                                  List Bluetooth LE devices in range
ls              //                            //
list_effects                                  List available effects
connect         mac_address or ID             Connect to light bulb
disconnect                                    Disconnect from current light bulb
set_color       name or hexadecimal value     Change bulb's color
set_warm_light  intensity[0.0-1.0]            Set warm light
set_effect      effect_name speed[1-20]       Set an effect
turn            on|off                        Turn on / off the bulb
read            name|device_info|date_time    Read device_info/datetime from the bulb
exit                                          Exit the script
> ls
Listing Bluetooth LE devices in range for 5 minutes.Press CTRL+C to stop searching.
ID    Name                           Mac address 
--    ----                           ----------- 
1     LEDBLE-1D433903                c7:17:1d:43:39:03
^C

> connect 1
INFO:magicblue.magicblueshell:Connected
> set_color red
> exit
Bye !

Passing command as an option

Script can also be used by command line (for example to include it in custom shell scripts) Usage is defined as follow :

usage: magicblueshell [-h] [-l LIST_COMMANDS] [-c COMMAND] [-m MAC_ADDRESS]
                      [-a BLUETOOTH_ADAPTER] [-b BULB_VERSION]

Python tool to control MagicBlue bulbs over Bluetooth

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -l LIST_COMMANDS, --list_commands LIST_COMMANDS
                        List available commands
  -c COMMAND, --command COMMAND
                        Command to execute
  -m MAC_ADDRESS, --mac_address MAC_ADDRESS
                        Device mac address. Must be set if command given in -c
                        needs you to be connected
  -a BLUETOOTH_ADAPTER, --bluetooth_adapter BLUETOOTH_ADAPTER
                        Bluetooth adapter name as listed by hciconfig
  -b BULB_VERSION, --bulb-version BULB_VERSION
                        Bulb version as displayed in the official app

So if you want to change the color of bulb with mac address "C7:17:1D:43:39:03", just run :

sudo magicblueshell -c 'set_color red' -m C7:17:1D:43:39:03

TODO (help welcome!)

Use the wiki info as a reference to implement turn_on / turn_off in a cleaner way (this may means being able to get the state from the bulb directly)
Create a proper documentation

mouth4war/magicblue