The easiest way to install it is with Docker, and it’s also available as a Home Assistant addon. You can also install it manually on an existing local web server with PHP available. Once installed, you’ll need to create a user account, and then you can start adding your devices by IP address.
Once all your devices are in there, you’ll get a nice list, with their IP address and their current version of the Tasmota firmware. You can then jump quickly into the standard Tasmota configuration for your device, but you can also configure many settings from within the TasmoAdmin interface. This includes things like the MQTT and Wi-Fi settings.
You can also use TasmoAdmin to perform bulk actions on multiple devices at once. For example, you can trigger backups or firmware updates in bulk. The ‘Start’ page in TasmoAdmin also lets you, for example, turn all of your switches on or off at once.
It’s a handy tool. Bear in mind that if you run TasmoAdmin as a Home Assistant addon, it doesn’t currently support ‘ingress’ and so you can’t open it within the Home Assistant interface. This also means that you might not be able to access the dashboard remotely. TasmoAdmin may also work with OpenBeken devices, but I haven’t tried this myself.
Last year, I wrote about a tool called ‘tuya-convert’ which exploits a vulnerability in ESP-based Tuya devices to install custom firmware such as Tasmota. But not all Tuya devices use ESP chips, and that’s where tuya-cloudcutter comes in.
I have one such device, an ‘S11’ RF and IR bridge (pictured above) that I picked up cheaply from AliExpress last year. Instead of one of Espressif’s ESP chips, it comes with a Beken BK7231N chip. Having disassembled its case, I also didn’t find any obvious pins for the UART bus. So I was relieved to come across tuya-cloudcutter, as it doesn’t require any soldering or disassembly. tuya-cloudcutter should work with any devices that use the BK7231T and BK7231N chips.
Like tuya-convert, tuya-cloudcutter exploits a vulnerability. This was responsibly disclosed to Tuya (the bug bounty was donated to charity), and newer devices are shipped without this vulnerability. However, there’s no firmware update for my S11 device to fix the issue, which is perhaps poor from a security perspective but suits my needs right now.
Running tuya-cloudcutter on a Raspberry Pi
You’ll need to run tuya-cloudcutter on a Linux device, and a Raspberry Pi is perfect for this. Indeed, there’s a detailed tutorial to follow. You’ll need Python, Docker, Git and NetworkManager installed and enabled, and there are a couple of configuration files to edit before you start. Everything is done using a command prompt, so you could do it over SSH using a Windows machine with Putty if you wanted to.
A note: I first tried this on my nine-year-old’s Raspberry Pi 400, and it didn’t work, whereas it did on my Raspberry Pi 4. I believe it was an issue with the specific Wi-Fi adaptor in the Raspberry Pi 400.
You may find that it’s easier to have the device already set up in the Tuya or Smart Life app, as you’ll be able to find the existing firmware version. You’ll need this when running the tuya-cloudcutter tool.
Detaching and flashing
tuya-cloudcutter offers two modes:
Detach – this leaves the Tuya firmware intact on the device, but detaches it from the Tuya cloud. You can then use the LocalTuya or TuyaLocal custom Home Assistant integrations from HACS to control your device, but the official Tuya and Smart Life apps won’t work anymore.
Flash – this also flashes new firmware onto the device.
In terms of firmware choices, by default you get:
OpenBeken – a Tasmota-like firmware where you can configure the device
ESPHome Kickstart – a minimal version of ESPHome, which can be updated later.
You can also add your own firmware, although be careful as you may brick your device if the firmware isn’t configured correctly.
If you choose to flash new firmware, then when the tool has run correctly, you’ll see a new Wi-Fi network appear for you to connect to. The Hotspot login page should open automatically, but if not, go to http://192.168.4.1/ to proceed. You can then configure the firmware to connect to your Wi-Fi network.
Switching firmware later
For my device, I tried OpenBeken first, but found that it wasn’t able to use the RF capabilities of the device. Instead, I built an ESPHome configuration, using the tuya_rf custom component, and flashed that, using OpenBeken’s OTA firmware updater. Because once you’ve used tuya-cloudcutter to install new firmware on a device, you don’t need to use it again – you can switch from OpenBeken to ESPHome and vice versa quite easily.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about flashing Tasmota firmware onto some old Tuya smart plugs, using a USB to UART converter and some Dupont jumper cables. I also flashed Tasmota onto a Sonoff RF Bridge, which I’d bought to listen to doorbell presses. This meant that the RF Bridge would work with Home Assistant without needing a HACS integration or addon, and wouldn’t need to rely on cloud services to run.
However, inside every Sonoff RF Bridge there are two wolves chips with firmware. There’s an ESP8266 chip, which handles the Wi-Fi side of things, and an OBS38S003 chip which handles RF communication. I have the latest R2 v2.2 model; older ones have a different RF chip.
The default iTead firmware on the RF chip has been locked down to only support a limited number of RF messages. That’s fine if your device is supported, but my doorbell isn’t. So even with Tasmota installed, pressing the button my doorbell didn’t do anything as the RF firmware was programmed to ignore it.
Portisch RF fimrware
The OBS38S003 RF chip can be flashed with ‘Portisch’ firmware, which allows all RF messages to be received and decoded. However, whereas the ESP9266 chip has UART pins that don’t require any soldering to access, the OBS38S003 doesn’t support a UART bus. There are therefore two ways to get around this:
Modify the board using additional soldered cables and cutting some lines on the board
Using another circuit board, flashing firmware onto that, and then using the flashing board to flash the chip.
I went with option 2 – I don’t have a soldering iron to hand, and didn’t want to make a mistake and damage the board beyond repair. Instead, I bought this AZDelivery D1 NodeMCU Wi-Fi Development Board(sponsored link). There are a number of ‘D1’ boards out there – Wemos make the most well-known – but this was £7 and available from Amazon. Ironically this board also contains an ESP8266 chip.
Flashing the development board
To flash the D1 board, I needed to install two things:
I installed both, and then followed the instructions that came with the AZDelivery D1 board to set it up as a board in the Ardunio IDE. Next, I loaded the OnbrightFlasher into the Ardunio IDE and flashed it onto the D1 board. Make sure that use a micro-USB cable that supports both data and charging – a charging-only cable will power the device, but you won’t be able to connect to the D1.
Once the firmware is flashed, you can disconnect everything, put your Sonoff RF Bridge back together.
Testing the Portisch firmware
In Tasmota, open the Console and type in ‘rfraw 1‘ and press enter to enable Portisch. Then type ‘rfraw 192‘, and the device should beep. You can then type ‘rfraw 177′ and the Sonoff RF Bridge will go into ‘bucket sniffing’ mode – this will display the various codes being broadcast on the 433 MHz band. There’s more guidance on the Tasmota device page and RF commands section.
So, is my doorbell smart now?
The bad news is that, despite all this work, I haven’t been able to use the RF Bridge to capture my doorbell’s signals to turn them into actions in Home Assistant. The codes being sent by my doorbell seem to rotate, presumably so that only the receivers in my house respond and not someone else’s. And, the 433 MHz channel is also very noisy – there are lots of codes being sent by other devices like a frustrating game of Numberwang.
Basically, if I want to have a smart doorbell, I’m going to need to just buy an actual smart doorbell, aren’t I? At least I have an ESP development board to play with now.
For my Zigbee devices, I use Zigbee2MQTT and a Sonoff USB Zigbee dongle as my co-ordinator. As I came quite late to the Zigbee party, I didn’t pick up a proprietary Zigbee bridge, but if I had, I wouldn’t use one. Today, I’m going to go through a few reasons why.
Examples of proprietary Zigbee bridges include the Philips Hue Bridge, the Ikea Dirigera Hub and the Tuya Zigbee gateway, but there are others. Here are my reasons why it’s best to go with a more open system, like Zigbee2MQTT or Home Assistant’s Zigbee integration. I’ve previously compared the two.
Having all your devices on one Zigbee network
Zigbee is a mesh network. That means that, as more devices are added, the network actually gets stronger, as each device can communicate with each other. This is especially true with mains powered Zigbee devices like smart plugs and light bulbs. Therefore, if all of your Zigbee devices are on the same network, the connection between each device should be stronger. I’ve included a diagram of my network above, and you can see the multiple mesh connections between devices.
If you have multiple Zigbee bridges – say one for your Hue lights and another for your Ikea smart plugs – you risk causing interference between networks. Furthermore, Zigbee runs on the same 2.4 GHz frequency band as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and your microwave oven. Having everyone on one network should reduce interference.
Better device support
Some Zigbee bridges are better than others, when it comes to supporting third-party devices. For example, you might be able to add an Ikea Tradfri bulb to a Philips Hue bridge, but possibly not another kind of device. Zigbee2MQTT has, arguably, the best device support and will work with just about any Zigbee device, regardless of manufacturer. You can check the Zigbee Device Compatibility Repository to see which devices work with which platform.
My Zigbee devices are a mixture of Tuya and Ikea, and they co-exist well within Zigbee2MQTT.
Cheaper
Most proprietary Zigbee bridges cost around £60. Meanwhile you can plug a USB Zigbee dongle into a spare PC, or a low-powered Raspberry Pi device that you may already have. The USB dongles typically cost £20-30 each (my Sonoff ZBDongle-E costs £27 at Amazon at present [sponsored link]), and you’ll only need one dongle and one computer rather than multiple bridges.
Easier to troubleshoot
With both Home Assistant’s ZHA and Zigbee2MQTT, you can look at the logs to see what’s going on inside your Zigbee network. Hopefully, that’ll help with troubleshooting any devices that aren’t working the way they should. As shown above, you can also get a diagrammatic representation of your network. This lets you see how your devices connect to each other and whether there are any weak spots on your mesh.
Not reliant on cloud services
There’s a risk that your proprietary Zigbee bridges could become expensive paperweights, if their manufacturers decide they’re no longer going to support them and turn off the cloud servers. They may continue to work locally, but if their cloud servers go dark, you may find that you can’t control your devices remotely any-more. By hosting your own Zigbee bridge, you can still have remote access but on your own terms. I use Homeway for remote access to Home Assistant, but you can also set up your own reverse proxy, for example.
Proprietary bridges may offer some convenience and a nice app, But, if you’re willing to put a bit of effort in to manage your Zigbee devices yourself on one single network, I think there are more advantages of going down the route of using Zigbee2MQTT or ZHA.
Regular readers may be relieved to know that I’m done writing about my trip to Athens, and are back to the occasional series of ‘Neil reviews cheap Zigbee devices from AliExpress’.
Earlier this month, I reviewed Zigbee window sensors, and this time I’m reviewing a Zigbee PIR motion sensor. PIR stands for ‘passive infrared’, and senses changes in infrared light to detect motion. It’s used in most motion detectors for burglar alarm systems, but you can buy sensors such as these for home automation too. In my case, I’ve fitted one to the top of our cellar stairs, to turn on a light in the cellar when motion is detected.
It’s pretty small – about an inch across – and runs on a single CR2450 battery (provided). You also get a sticky pad to attach to surfaces, and a couple of tools for opening the battery flap and for resetting and pairing it. It’s compatible with Zigbee2MQTT.
In terms of configurability, you can adjust its sensitivity, and its keep time. The keep time means that it remains in the ‘occupied’ (i.e. motion detected) state for a given number of seconds after motion was last detected. If you have a motion activated light, this prevents the light constantly flashing on and off.
As with the window sensors, you can also buy these devices from Amazon(sponsored link) if you need them quickly, but again they’re significantly more expensive than AliExpress.
To make the light turn on and off, I have automations set up in Home Assistant. I also bought a Zigbee smart light bulb for the motion sensor. Ideally I would have just bought one that switches on and off, but the cheapest one I could find is a colour changing dimmable one. Which is overkill for a cellar light, but hey, it was cheap. Indeed, the motion sensor and light bulb collectively cost less than £9.
Building on last week’s post about flashing smart plugs Tasmota, today I’m going to talk about other custom firmware that you can install on devices with an Espressif ESP chip. Tasmota is the most well-known, but whilst researching how to do the flashing, I’ve come across some others.
Tasmota
Obviously the first one I should mention is Tasmota. It seems to be the most well-used, with active development and lots of features. It’s designed to be used only on ESP32 and ESP8266 boards. Tasmota incidentally is an acronym which stands for Theo-Arends-Sonoff-MQTT-OTA and to this day Theo Arends remains the primary developer.
Recent Tasmota releases have included Matter support, albeit only on ESP32 chips which have more storage than ESP8266.
Notably, ESPurna only works on ESP8265 and ESP8266 chips, whereas Tasmota and ESPEasy also work on ESP32 chips, such as the one in the m5stack Atom Lite that I turned into a Bluetooth Proxy. Both ESPurna and ESPEasy use MQTT to communicate with other devices.
ESPHome
ESPHome is part of the Open Home Foundation, along with Home Assistant, and as such integrates well with Home Assistant. Unlike the other firmware tools here, ESPHome doesn’t use MQTT by default, although if you build your own firmware with ESPHome then you can add it as an optional extra. Instead, it communicates via Home Assistant’s API. This offers some advantages – it allows Home Assistant to install firmware updates for ESPHome devices. But if you were to switch from Home Assistant to another smart home platform, then you would either need to recompile the ESPHome firmware to add MQTT, or switch to one of the other firmware platforms listed here.
Another thing I’m less keen on about ESPHome is that you use a YAML configuration file to configure devices. I found Tasmota’s web-based interface much more user-friendly.
It’s worth noting that, as well as Espressif chips, ESPHome also works on RealTek RTL8710 and Beken BK7231 series chips too.
OpenMQTTGateway
OpenMQTTGateway is a more specialised firmware designed to make existing non-smart products work over MQTT. It’s best used with BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy), RD, Infrared and old fashioned Serial (RS232) devices. You can buy devices from Theengs which have the OpenMQTTGateway firmware already flashed.
As far as I can tell, OpenMQTTGateway just works on ESP32 chips.
OpenBeken
OpenBeken started out as a way of implementing a Tasmota-like experience on Beken BK7231 chips, but now supports a huge range of chips including ESP32 (but not some other Espressif chips like ESP8826) and RealTek RTL8710. It apparently works in a similar way to Tasmota, but I’ve yet to try it. I have one Tuya device with a BK7231 chip, but I haven’t yet been brave enough to try to flash it. Again, it uses MQTT to communicate with other devices.
I’m a little over 18 months into my Home Assistant journey, and now have 54 integrations set up. This includes standard integrations set up in the Home Assistant interface, some added using YAML, and custom integrations added via HACS.
When I first set Home Assistant, I went out of my way to set up as many integrations as possible, regardless of whether I needed them. Home Assistant scales quite well, but some integrations take longer to load than others. If you’ve ever logged in whilst Home Assistant is restarting to see a dashboard with many missing entities, you’ll know what I mean.
There’s a panel hidden away in Home Assistant’s Lovelace interface that tells you how long each integration takes to load. Open Settings, scroll down to System, and select Repairs. Then, click on the three vertical dots at the top right, and choose ‘Integration Startup Times’.
The list will be sorted with those taking the longest at the top. The vast majority of mine take less than a second to load, but there are some outliers. My worst offenders are:
Google Nest (24 seconds). Taking three seconds longer than a famous So Solid Crew song, this is the integration for my Nest Thermostat. I use this quite a bit in Home Assistant, so I’m stuck with it.
Wyoming Protocol (21.5 seconds). This is the bridge between Home Assistant’s Assist chat bot, and Homeway Sage. To be honest, I don’t use this, so this is an easy one to turn off. It’s an auto-discovered integration.
Meross LAN (21 seconds). This is a custom integration from HACS for my Meross smart plugs, and I need this for energy monitoring. Whilst the smart plugs also support Matter, the energy monitoring is only available via this integration. Theoretically, I can convince the smart plugs to use MQTT and that might negate the need for this integration, but I haven’t fully investigated it.
DLNA Digital Media Server (17 seconds). Another auto-discovered integration, courtesy of my router. I’m not using this, so this is another good candidate to disable.
Spotify (15 seconds). This allows me to control Spotify playback in Home Assistant. In reality, I don’t really use it, but it is on my dashboard.
Home Connect (14 seconds). This is for my smart Bosch dishwasher. I use this for a dashboard badge to see if the dishwasher is on at a glance. Our dishwasher is built-in and almost silent so this is useful.
Fitbit (14 seconds). Another dashboard badge to see how much charge is left in my Fitbit Versa 3.
Of these, there were two obvious candidates to remove – Wyoming and DLNA, saving a combined 30 seconds of startup time.
Ignored integrations
As they’re both integrations which are auto-discovered, I have had to tell Home Assistant to ignore them. On the Integrations Settings page, if you click the filter icon on the top right, you can then show the integrations that are ignored. I’ve added Wyoming Protocol there; it joins Philips Hue (since I’m using Bifrost) and ZHA (since I’m using Zigbee2MQTT)
Last year, I wrote about using a tool called tuya-convert to replace the firmware on my Tuya smart plugs. The firmware in question is Tasmota, which is an open source replacement firmware for devices with Espressif ESP chips. All my Tuya smart plugs have an ESP8266 chip, which can take custom firmware.
There are two ways of flashing Tasmota onto Tuya devices – an easy way, and a harder way.
There’s also a kind-of third ‘super-easy’ way, that I’ll mention towards the end.
tuya-convert – the easy way
I mentioned tuya-convert, which is a command line tool that exploits a vulnerability in older Tuya firmware to install Tasmota. You’ll need a computer such as a Raspberry Pi that has both Wi-Fi and Ethernet, and a smartphone. The tuya-convert tool then creates a hotspot that your Tuya devices can connect to when in pairing mode, and deploys the firmware wirelessly.
The key thing to emphasise here is that it only works with older firmware. Tuya patched the vulnerability in an update that came out some years ago, and indeed I’d already installed this on my smart plugs. That meant that tuya-convert could see the smart plugs, but couldn’t deploy the Tasmota firmware. So, I had to do it the hard way.
Using a UART converter – the hard way
As you may have guessed from the photo above, the only way I was able to flash Tasmota onto these smart plugs was by taking one apart, and using a USB to UART converter with some jumper cables. If tuya-convert doesn’t work, then this is what you’ll need to do. You’ll need the following:
Some Dupont Jumper cables – again, I bought these from AliExpress for £2.40. I picked up a big bag of male-male, female-female and male-female cables, but you only really need male-female cables if you want to save a few pence.
A computer with a USB port
I would also recommend the following:
Some electrical tape to hold things down
A USB extension cable
For the plugs that I was working with, I didn’t need a soldering iron, but some others may require it.
Disassembly and what’s inside
Firstly, it is very, very important that your smart plugs are not plugged into the mains while you do this, unless you want to burn yourself and/or your house down. We’ll be providing power via a different method, so make sure your device is not plugged in via the usual method. With my smart plugs, the positioning of the screws means it’s impossible for them to be plugged into the mains anyway.
Next, remove the screws from the plug. There were five on mine – the central one had to be removed first, and then the remaining four. Once that was done, I carefully separated the top and bottom of the housing.
The bottom part includes the high voltage AC circuitry. We’re not concerned with this and can leave it alone. What we’re interested in is the ancillary circuit board in the top part. It’s held in place by two small screws – you can remove these if you wish, but you can easily access the five pin holes that we need with the board still screwed in place.
The pin holes are as follows, with the first closest to the edge:
RX – data in
TX – data out
GND – ground
GPI00 – the pin hole that puts the smart plug into flashing mode
5V – the 5 volt power input pin hole
Normally, ESP chips work at 3.3 volts, but there’s a converter chip elsewhere on the circuit board for these specific smart plug. Yours may be different, so check first to see if it’s 3.3 volts or 5 volts. The UART to USB converter that I have offers both, so we’ll use five volts for this.
Connecting the wires
Firstly, make sure your USB to UART converter is not plugged in to the computer. You’ll need to get your Dupont cables and connect them from your converter to the board. The pins on the converter should be labelled, so you need to connect them as follows:
From RX on the board to TXD on the converter
From TX on the board to RXD on the converter
From 5V on the board to 5V on the converter
From bothGND and GPI00 on the board to GND on the converter
For this last one, I used three cables – two male-male cable from each of the GND and GPI00 ports on the board, and one female-male cable from the GND port on the converter – and then taped the pins at the end of the wires together. If it helps, there’s a standard wiring diagram on the Tasmota Getting Started page – although we’re connecting one additional wire (GPI00).
Getting read to flash Tasmota
Now that we’ve linked the converter to board, we can do the fun bit – flashing the device. There are several ways you can do this, of which I would recommend two:
Tasmotizer – this is a simple Windows program for flashing. The key advantage is that it can optionally download and backup the previous firmware, just in case you want to restore it later.
Tasmota Web Installer – this allows you to install Tasmota through your web browser, using WebSerial. As it stands, only desktop versions of Chrome, Edge and Opera support it, so you can’t use Firefox or Safari.
Personally, I had a better experience with the Web Installer, so this is what I used. Once you’ve opened your flashing tool, plug the USB to UART converter into your computer and then click ‘Connect’. Your browser will ask for your permission to link the web page with the COM port created by the converter, so you’ll need to grant permission.
Note: sometimes the COM port wouldn’t show for me in the browser. If this happens to you, try opening Device Manager, if using Windows, to ensure that the driver has installed correctly. If not, asking Device Manager to simply update the drivers should be enough. I had the most success if I opened the web page, connected the USB to UART converter and then clicked ‘Connect’ in that order.
If all is well, the web flasher will connect to your device, erase the existing firmware and then upload Tasmota. It’s a quick process – the binary file for Tasmota version 15 is only 655 kilobytes, so it’ll only take a couple of minutes at most.
If you get a connection error, try swapping the RX and TX cables over and then try again, and make sure that the light on the circuit board isn’t on or flashing. If the light is on, it’s a sign that you’ve not connected the GPI00 pin correctly.
Assuming that the flashing worked, you can take the jumper cables out and reassemble your device and plug it back in to the mains.
Configuring Tasmota
So, now that your device has been flashed, you need to configure Tasmota on the device. Get your phone out, and go to Wi-Fi settings. You should see a new Wi-Fi hotspot called ‘tasmota-something-something’, where the somethings are an alphanumeric string – connect to it. A hotspot login box should appear – if not, go to http://192.168.4.1/ in your phone’s web browser.
The first step is to connect Tasmota to your Wi-Fi network. Choose the network, or type it in, and provide the password. Tasmota will then connect, and, if successful, will redirect to its new IP address which it’ll display on screen. I suggest making a note of this.
You’ll now need to navigate to Tasmota’s new IP address in a web browser – you can do this on any device, not just your phone. The first thing we need to do is tell Tasmota what kind of device it has been installed on. The easiest way to do this is with a Template, and there are a huge range of templates listed here. I couldn’t find an exact match for mine, but the closest was this one, which gave me the following template code:
To paste this template into Tasmota, I used this guide. From the Tasmota home screen, I clicked ‘Configuration’, then ‘Configure Other’, and pasted the whole string into the ‘Template’ field at the top. Tick the box that says ‘Activate’, and then the green Save button at the bottom. Tasmota will restart, and then you’ll find that your smart plug now works. Huzzah!
Integrating Tasmota with Home Assistant
If you want your newly Tasmotised smart plug to appear in Home Assistant, then there are a couple more steps that we need to take. Tasmota communicated with other devices using MQTT, so if you don’t already have MQTT set up in Home Assistant, you’ll need to do this. The easiest way is to install the Mosquitto addon; this will then suggest the MQTT integration for you.
Next, we need to create a user account for Tasmota to use with MQTT. In Home Assistant, open Settings, and then People. At the top, select ‘Users’, and then click the blue ‘add user’ button. Give them a username and password, and then save these details somewhere safe for the next step.
Back to Tasmota. Firstly, we need to change a setting to allow Home Assistant to automatically discover your new Tasmota device. From the Tasmota home screen, choose ‘Console’, and input the following command:
SetOption19 0
Press enter. Next, go back to the Tasmota home screen, and into ‘Configuration’ again. Select the ‘Configure MQTT’ option. In the first box, you’ll need to enter the IP address or local hostname for your Home Assistant installation. If you use Home Assistant OS, this is most likely to be ‘homeassistant.local’.
Next, we’ll need to enter the username and password for the MQTT account we created earlier. The rest of the fields can be left with their default values, unless you want to customise the name.
Back to Home Assistant. If this is your first Tasmota device, then you should receive a notification that a new Tasmota device was found, and that you need to install the Tasmota integration. Do this, and your device will now be available. If you add any further devices, these will automatically appear in the Tasmota integration once their MQTT settings have been configured.
And that’s it. You should now be able to control your devices without needing to use Tuya’s cloud services.
The super-easy way – pre-flashed Tasmota devices
If you don’t already own a suitable smart plug, but want to use Tasmota, my advice would be to buy a smart plug with Tasmota already flashed. Local Bytes sell pre-flashed Tasmota smart plugs, so you can skip the disassembly and flashing sections of this guide. Alternatively, try eBay, where these plugs can also be bought pre-flashed.
That being said, I’m pleased to have been able to flash Tasmota on these smart plugs. I’m currently only using one of them, but I’ve been able to give them a new lease of life with about £5 of materials and an hour or so of my time. Indeed, the spare ones may well end up on eBay in due course for someone else to use. It’s far better than letting them become yet more e-waste.
What’s next
Last year I bought a Sonoff Wi-Fi RF Bridge, but was disappointed that it wouldn’t work the way that I expected it to. And getting it to work with Home Assistant was a bit of a pain, requiring a custom integration from HACS or an addon. I’ve already installed Tasmota on it, so it too has local control, and I’m looking at flashing the RF chip with a different custom firmware to make it more useful. That will probably require soldering and is for another future blog post, however.
If you have a Solax inverter attached to your solar panels, and get your energy from Octopus, then you can now calculate your earnings using live tariff data in the Solax app. I gather this feature has been there for a few months, but I’ve only recently found out about it. Here’s how to set it up.
Firstly, open the SolaxCloud app. On the home screen, tap the Earnings section. At the top right, you should see an icon that looks like a calculator with a lightning bolt on it, so tap that. You’ll now see two tabs – ‘To Grid’ and ‘From Grid’.
Get your Octopus API key
Before we continue, you’ll need to generate an API key. Log into your online Octopus Energy account (on the web, not on the app). At the top, it should say ‘Hi, [your name]’, display your account number, and then show a link called ‘Personal Details’. Click that link.
You should now see several boxes, one of which is called ‘Developer settings’. Click the ‘API access‘ button.
Scroll down a bit, and you’ll see a box labelled ‘Your API key:’. Copy this key, and preferably save it in a password manager. You can only have one API key, but you can use it for multiple things – I use my key for the Octopus Energy integration for Home Assistant, for example. You can regenerate your key, but it’ll invalidate your previous key, and you’ll only be shown it once on the Octopus web site. That’s why it’s best to treat it like your password.
Whilst you’re on Octopus’ web site, make a note of your account number too, as you’ll need this in a moment.
Enable automatic tariff setting
Back to the SolaxCloud app. Below the ‘To Grid’ and ‘From Grid’ tabs, you should have two further tabs: ‘Customized’ and ‘Automatic’. Tap ‘automatic’.
A new box called ‘Tariff provider’ appears, so tap this, and select ‘Octopus’. There’s another option called ‘Nord Pool’ which may work if you use a different energy supplier. I don’t, so I’ve only tested this with Octopus.
Now, you’ll have two options: ‘API Key’ and ‘Select a package’. ‘Select a package’ lets you manually choose your tariff and region, but it won’t update automatically if you change your tariff. So, we’ll select ‘API key’. Here, enter your account number, and then the API key, and tap ‘Save’. You should find that your current tariff and meter point access number now appear in the app. Scroll down, and you’ll be able to see the underlying tariff data, both as a graph and the raw data.
I’m on a fixed tariff with Octopus, so at present there’s no fluctuation with my import and export prices. However, if you’re on a tariff such as Octopus Agile, you’ll now see this data in the SolaxCloud app. What’s more, any future earnings will be calculated using this tariff data, and so it’ll more accurately reflect how much money your solar panels and/or battery are saving you.
Join Octopus
Octopus is now the UK’s largest electricity supplier, with a market share of 22%. And, with features like API access, the chances are that if you’re geeky enough to read this sort of blog post, then you’re already signed up. However, if not, here’s my referral link – you’ll get £50 off your first bill if you sign up. Financial incentives aside, of all the energy companies that I have used, Octopus have had the best customer service by far.
Today I’m writing about Bifrost, which is software that emulates a Philips Hue bridge for controlling smart light bulbs. It works with Zigbee2MQTT, and is designed to replicate the core Philips hardware using open source software.
Bifrost allows you to control any Zigbee smart lights (bulbs, strips etc) using the Philips Hue app, without needing to buy the Hue Bridge. The Hue bridge normally costs around £50 on Amazon (sponsored link). Instead, Bifrost can run on the same hardware as, say, Home Assistant, or an old an PC.
Setting up Bifrost
I’ve recently installed Bifrost on the same Raspberry Pi that hosts my Home Assistant instance (there’s an addon to make it easier). As it stands, it’s relatively new software, and so it has to be configured manually using a YAML file. You also need to be using Zigbee2MQTT, and have Zigbee smart bulbs – non-Zigbee devices aren’t supported, and nor is Home Assistant’s built in Zigbee controller. Also, Bifrost only works with lights – for example, I have a Zigbee smart plug which controls a light, and Bifrost ignores this.
The other thing to be aware of is that Hue uses ports 80 and 443, so if you want to use Bifrost, there can’t be any other software acting as a web server on the same machine. I had to pause my use of Nginx Proxy Manager to get it to work; thankfully, I’m now using Homeway for remote access to Home Assistant so this wasn’t an issue. Whilst you can tell Bifrost to open other ports instead, most Hue apps won’t work if you do this.
Once Bifrost is running and has found your Zigbee devices, you should be able to use the official Hue app to set up your lights. You’ll need to tell the app that your bridge doesn’t have a QR code; if all goes well, it’ll detect the Hue mDNS packets that Bifrost broadcasts, and it’ll then work just as if you had a genuine Hue bridge.
Benefits of the Hue app
The official Hue app has some features that other smart home apps don’t have – mainly the ‘Scene Gallery’. If you have multiple multi-colour lights in a particular room, Hue can offer to set them to different, but complementary colours.
It should be noted that, with Bifrost, you can use the Hue app to control (theoretically) any smart lights, regardless of whether they were manufactured by Philips or not. The multi-colour lights I have were a couple of cheap Tuya Zigbee strips from AliExpress, and they work fine in the Hue app through Bifrost.
Home Assistant itself includes a Hue emulator. It’s an older integration that has to be configured using YAML, and it’s more limited. It probably won’t work with the official Hue app – I haven’t tried it myself. It’s mainly there as an easier way to bridge devices in Home Assistant into Amazon Alexa.
