'WIFI' controlled LED bulbs

Forums › Gadgets, robotics, home automation, electronics (including wearables) › 'WIFI' controlled LED bulbs - Limitless LED

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#1098294 30-Jul-2014 06:11

Im pretty sure Ninja Blocks support the Limitless bulbs without going through the wifi bridge.

redstorm

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#1098307 30-Jul-2014 07:34

tchart: Im pretty sure Ninja Blocks support the Limitless bulbs without going through the wifi bridge.

Unfortunatly not.

our Ninja Block will need access to the WiFi Receiver Bridge to control your lights.

RmACK

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#1098309 30-Jul-2014 07:43

I've replaced the wifi module from my bridge with an Arduino with Ethernet shield. I still use the micro controller and RF transceiver from the bridge, but it is now effectively ethernet rather than wifi. This has stopped the disconnections that I was experiencing and makes the RGBW lights respond much faster - you can spin your finger round the colour wheel in the app and hardly get any backlog of commands building up.

redstorm

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#1098320 30-Jul-2014 07:50

I was having a look through the Open Source Developers Kit to see what was available. Looks like its only Opensource to the WiFi bridge, nothing about the RF is open source unfortunately.

Nothing stopping you from opening up the bridge and having a look at what components are involved to identify frequency, also open up a bulb (in the name of science of course) to see whats going on at the other end. Capturing the RF isn't that difficult. it would be preferable if it was open source then the community could get more creative.

At the moment its not what i call home automation, having a remote for the lights or app on your phone, i would rather see the lights turn on based on motion detectors, IR or camera. I also calculate sunrise sunset for my location via a perl script that could easily be used to turn on the lights when the sun goes down. i.e a motion detector in the hall at night detects movement and turns on the light a 5% for example, no need to fumble around for the remote or phone.

How about a 2 way bulb with an IR sensor or motion sensor, plug and play in the hallway environment, have one per room that you want to utilize motion detection to turn on the light...

redstorm

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#1098321 30-Jul-2014 07:54

RmACK: I've replaced the wifi module from my bridge with an Arduino with Ethernet shield. I still use the micro controller and RF transceiver from the bridge, but it is now effectively ethernet rather than wifi. This has stopped the disconnections that I was experiencing and makes the RGBW lights respond much faster - you can spin your finger round the colour wheel in the app and hardly get any backlog of commands building up.

I wonder how hard it would be to attach the micro controller and RF transceiver from the bridge to the GPIO pins on a Raspberry Pi? This would pretty much get me to where i want to be.

The other thing is if you have a generic RF transmitter on a PC or Pi it could be used to control other RF devices i.e. like open the garage door.

LimitlessLED

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#1098355 30-Jul-2014 09:06

the RF is using a 802.15.4 encryption, if you have ever tried to decrypt Zigbee, you will know that it is impossible. because the private encryption key is inside the silicon chip in the remote and in the bulb. the private encryption key is never passed over the air.

LimitlessLED

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#1098359 30-Jul-2014 09:09

yes you can Connect an PC to any USB Ardiuno or USB FTDI cable that has TTL and send commands directly to the remote control RF chip. but only works if you first pair the remote to the bulbs in the group. This is quite commonly done at the moment by people with electronics skills that mix and match home automation technologies.

Cheers,
Hamish.
-LimitlessLED.

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Trade NZ and US shares and funds with Sharesies (affiliate link).

redstorm

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#1098405 30-Jul-2014 09:58

LimitlessLED: the RF is using a 802.15.4 encryption, if you have ever tried to decrypt Zigbee, you will know that it is impossible. because the private encryption key is inside the silicon chip in the remote and in the bulb. the private encryption key is never passed over the air.

Q: why encrypt a light bulb control code?

As far as the private key not being sent over the air, i don't see that as a major problem, just capture for example the ON command encryption and all, and replay it warts and all, as the security keys don't change, so the bulb wont care.

I like it when people are so confident in their security that they say its impossible, its like a red flag to a bull.

Zigbee has been cracked already, the keys are available to dump from the flash from the EM250 chip.

Once the debugger was acquired,
I used Ember tools and software to dump the device firmware as a hex
file. To do this, the author connected the debugger to the SIF port of the
IDH, which provides and access to the entire flash and RAM memory space,

More specifically, four security components can be extracted from the
EM250

Any chance you can let me know what RF chips you are using?

richms

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#1098425 30-Jul-2014 10:19

What about between the microcontroller and the RF transciever chip? Is the encryption done in the micro or the RF chip?

Richard rich.ms

RmACK

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#1098788 30-Jul-2014 19:51

Please excuse the very long post...

redstorm: I wonder how hard it would be to attach the micro controller and RF transceiver from the bridge to the GPIO pins on a Raspberry Pi? This would pretty much get me to where i want to be.

No harder than what I did for Arduino. The link between the wifi module and micro in the bridge V4 is just 9600 baud uart sending just the two byte values published in the API (sans 0x55 stop byte).

redstorm: At the moment its not what i call home automation, having a remote for the lights or app on your phone, i would rather see the lights turn on based on motion detectors, IR or camera. I also calculate sunrise sunset for my location via a perl script that could easily be used to turn on the lights when the sun goes down.

Surely your perl scripts can fire UDP packets at the standard wifi bridge? I've been doing this (albeit with a different language) for a year now. Cron job runs every minute, checks database for events with a scheduled date in the past that haven't been marked as executed, then fires the codes out etc etc. I just never got round to the sunrise thing. I was thinking more of going for a light sensor, then adapting my code to allow the lights to be set to come on as soon as the light level in the room drops below a particular threshold during a certain time window. This would solve the issue of clouds.

redstorm: Any chance you can let me know what RF chips you are using?

I can't recall the part in the V2, but my V4 bridge uses a PL1167 from Powerlink Microelectronics, a 2.4GHz transceiver, communicating over SPI (also can handle I2C).

LimitlessLED: the RF is using a 802.15.4 encryption

I must say I am impressed that it uses such a sophisticated encryption algorithm. This also explains why there was so much data flowing between them that I couldn't make sense of!

richms: What about between the microcontroller and the RF transciever chip? Is the encryption done in the micro or the RF chip?

In the micro.

redstorm

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#1098798 30-Jul-2014 20:20

Thanks RmACK

Your right i could just send the commands to the wifi bridge, or even use the MiLight plugin to OpenHAB to do it ( save re inventing the wheel). nearly every forum i have come across their is bad feed back about the stability of the wifi bridge.

PL1167 from Powerlink Microelectronics via SPI this would be relatively easy to connect up to the SPI interface on the Pi which would give us RF, now just need to either capture and replay the encrypted signals in their entirety or tease out the private key from the micro.

The next hurdle is to find out what Micro it is connected to in the bridge or one of the remote controls, you don't perhaps remember which one that was?

gchiu

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#1098809 30-Jul-2014 20:42

redstorm:
PL1167 from Powerlink Microelectronics via SPI this would be relatively easy to connect up to the SPI interface on the Pi which would give us RF, now just need to either capture and replay the encrypted signals in their entirety or tease out the private key from the micro.

IEEE 802.15.4 has a frame counter to prevent the recording and playback of old messages.

tchart

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#1098830 30-Jul-2014 21:27

redstorm:

At the moment its not what i call home automation, having a remote for the lights or app on your phone, i would rather see the lights turn on based on motion detectors, IR or camera. I also calculate sunrise sunset for my location via a perl script that could easily be used to turn on the lights when the sun goes down. i.e a motion detector in the hall at night detects movement and turns on the light a 5% for example, no need to fumble around for the remote or phone.

Redstorm, do you have any old Android phones lying around? I've developed an app that intercepts text messages (with specific commands) and issues the wifi bridge with a command (eg turn on group 1 etc).

The reason Ive gone for SMS is that its an easy way to integrate with IFTTT. Right now I use IFTTT to message my "controller phone" to turn on various lights based on time events (like when I wake up), sunset or sunrise. IFTTT has loads of channels which include location ie you could turn on your lights when you arrive home etc. Simple!

My home alarm is also SMS enabled so Im hoping to set the lights to strobe when the alarm goes off.

Anyway, if you have a spare device (mine is docked permanently as its also my alarm clock) PM me and I can send you the app.

Trevor

tchart

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#1098832 30-Jul-2014 21:30

redstorm: nearly every forum i have come across their is bad feed back about the stability of the wifi bridge.

Mine was flakey as until I hard wired the power supply. I opened the bridge up to find the USB connector was no longer soldered on so after some advice from Hamish I soldered a USB cable onto the board.

My bridge has been on without issues for several weeks now.

redstorm

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#1098838 30-Jul-2014 21:37

gchiu:

IEEE 802.15.4 has a frame counter to prevent the recording and playback of old messages.

good to know, pretty much means going after the private key in the micro is the way forward, eliminate the weak point in the system and no longer require the wifi bridge.

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