[BK7231T (WB3S)] Merkury Smart Wi-Fi LED Strip [PN: MI-EW014-999W]

Hi,
I am adding a teardown and flashing of Merkury RGB LED Strip. I got this device as part of a Walmart bundle with a Google Home Mini as a Black Friday deal. It is a USB Powered RGB strip, using RGB PWM to power the 3 colors LEDs on the strip. This strip also draws a rather signifcant amount of power, approximately 10 watts on full white. I don't think this ever really sold outside of the bundle with it's part number, but here is the walmart link https://www.walmart.com/ip/Merkury-Innovations-Smart-Wi-Fi-LED-Strip-Lights-2M-6-5-FT/264936653?wmlspartner=wlpa&selectedSellerId=18118.

After getting the item I realized that esphome couldn't be put on the device, and figured out what getting OpenBeken flashed onto it would take. The case just snaps together with relative ease, so after taking that off I saw quit a lot room, so I decided to take just solder some short dupont ended wires and folding them into the case afterwards to make flashing/reflashing over UART easier if I wanted to try build my own application on it.

Packaging:

Appearance:
Main body:


I did find it interesting that the main body says RGBW, and the socket supports RGBW, when this only and RGB strip. The circuit board also the circuitry for the W, so that makes me wonder if this was sold as an RGBW strip as a different part-number in which case the teardown and flashing would look similar.

LED Strip:


Circuit Board:


The board is powered by the WB3S chipset, and just has a very small number of components. It is interesting to note that the board appears to completely support RGBW if you solder on the missing components.

New UART:


I soldered these short dupont cables onto the UART of the chipset to making connecting my generic USB-UART adapter easier if I ever need to use it again. Flashing then went easy with the generic bin, over UART.

After getting it connected to the Wi-Fi. I got the pins configured
1 - Btn
9 - PWM1 (Red)
24 - PWM2 (Green)
26 - PWM3 (Blue)

After these were set, it auto detected it as an RGB Strip, and just worked. On a 5W power supply, the LEDs were drawing too much causing discoloration, but that was fixed with a 10W supply. The role of strip get rather warm if left like this for a while. Unsure if it could ever get hot enough to cause damage, but something to note.