Neewer RGB WIFI module

This custom ESPHome firmware was designed to run my Neewer RGB WIFI module. It's a small ESP32 based gizmo that can be mounted directly to the back of your Neewer RGB lights to create a stable Bluetooth connection and make the light available over WIFI. It gets powered directly from the light. Once installed it just lives with the light, whereever it goes.

Compatibility

I believe the firmware should work with all Neewer lights of the RGB series. So far, it has been succesfully tested with the following lights:

• Neewer RGB 660
• Neewer RGB 660 Pro (thanks Michael)
• Neewer RGB 660 Pro II (thanks alexp1)

If you have tested the firmware or would like to test the firmware with a version of the Neewer RGB lights not listed here yet, please reach out to me so we can get your version of the lights listed here together with a shoutout to you.

Getting the hardware

If you are interested in building a Neewer RGB WIFI module for yourself, I've provided the instructions on my blog Rarely Unplugged. I also put together an instructional video on YouTbe. If you would rather buy one than build one yourself, I've been selling them on my Tindie store for a fair price.

Flashing the firmware

You can flash the firmware on your ESP32 to turn it into a Neewer RGB controller by either building the firmware from source or by uploading a pre-built binary firmware. To flash the firmware from source you will need a running ESPHome instance. If you do not have ESPHome or do not want to use it, you can instead follow the instructions to flash the firmware from a prebuilt binary.

Flash from binary (ESPHome optional)

1. Download the most recent build of the firmware (Wemos D1 Mini only).
2. Visit the ESPHome Web Tools website.
3. Plug your ESP32 device into your computer.
4. Click on "Connect", select the serial port your device is connected to and click "Connect" again.
5. Now click "Install" (NOT "Prepare for first use"!) and select the firmware binary you just downloaded.
6. After the firmware was flashed, click the three dot menu and then select "Configure Wifi" and then "Connect to Wifi".
7. Fill in your Wifi credentials and click "Connect"

Once you get the "Provisioned!" message you can either go to your ESPHome instance and adopt the newly flashed device into your ESPHome dashboard.

If you do not have ESPHome or don't want to use it, you can instead click "Visit device". You will be able to pair and control your device directly from this web interface. Note: currently color control is not available from this interface. The web server also exposes a simple REST API that allows you to integrate the paired light into other systems or apps, e.g. Bitfocus Companion.

Flash from source (using ESPHome)

Prepare your ESP32 device for first use and adopt it into ESPHome. Then add the following to the start of your devices yaml configuration:

packages:
  DanielBaulig.neewer-controller: github://DanielBaulig/neewer-controller/neewer-controller.yaml

And make sure to add the following to the esphome section:

esphome:
    # [...]
    name_add_mac_suffix: false

This will prevent readding the devices MAC address to the device name upon rebuilding.

Reflash your device. You should now be able to add it to Home Assistant. To pair a Neewer RGB light to your ESP32, follow the instructions under "Pairing".

Pairing

To pair the controller to a Neewer RGB light, simply put the controller board close to the powered on light (or make sure there is no other unpaired light close by) and hit the "Pair with closest device" button. You can find this button both in Home Assistant or on the controller web interface. It can also be triggered via REST API. The controller will pair with the light and proceed to connect to it. Connecting can take a few seconds, so give it some time. Once the light is connected you will be able to control it through Home Assistant, the controller web interface or REST API (e.g. using Bitfocus Companion).

Thanks

This ESP32 firmware is based on Aria Barrel's work on adapting Xu Lian's reverse engineered Neewer BLE protocol for ESPHome.

It expands on the previous work by providing a more user-friendly discovery and pairing process that is independent from an actual ESPHome instance and reflashing the device and can be completed with just the binary firmware and a web browser, if need be.