Configuring OpenBeken on MagicHome RGBW-IR with BL602 for Home Assistant Discovery

I was able to flash the BL602 in a MagicHome compatible LED controller and configured the 5-pins for RGBW and IR, but so far I have not been able to get it added to Home Assistant using MQTT discovery.

I followed this guide for flashing with OpenBL602_1.17.246.bin and configured the pins. I did change the standard order of the channels to match the pinout of my 12V LED Strip:
GPIO3 = PWM, Channel 1 (red)
GPIO4 = PWM, Channel 2 (green)
GPIO21 = PWM, Channel 3 (blue)
GPIO20 = PWM, Channel 4 (white)
GPIO12 = IRRecv

I also configured the Names and MQTT topic to use "obl-b396-mhled" and later that day I upgraded via OTA to 1.17.247.

Then I followed this guide to configure Home Assistant Discovery, and I can see the MQTT State is "connected" from the main menu of the device page.



And I can see the device connecting in the MQTT logs in Mosquitto.



But no devices or entities appear in Home Assistant.



Today I upgraded again to 1.17.248 and tried running Discovery again, but still nothing is getting added to Home Assistant.

Here's the LED strip lit up and working with the White LEDs - the RGB LEDs also work, I just can't control it from Home Assistant yet.


This is the Controller on Amazon, although the photo in the listing is wrong as it does not show the IR receiver: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08Z7KXN6D/

And here's a photo of my specific controller with the ZJ-BWCE-IR-RGBW v1.2 board with the Buffalo BL602 L20 S8JlF3 2040-F2 chip.


Any ideas on what I need to do to get this into Home Assistant?

Hello, do you get that message?

What happens in HA logs when you get that message?

I do, but it actually says "No relay. PWM sensor or power driver running. MQTT discovery queued."



I see nothing new in the Home Assistant Core log nor in the Mosquitto broker log. Is there somewhere else to look?

MrShannon wrote:

Any ideas on what I need to do to get this into Home Assistant?

Have you tried manual MQTT configuration?



In my case it is RGB controller. In your case you would have to add:

color_temp_command_topic: "cmnd/obl429A0BD6/led_temperature"
color_temp_state_topic: "obl429A0BD6/led_temperature/get"

I did try that, but it did not work for me. And, the yaml I copied out of the Home Assistant Cfg page looks like it would make four separate lights, one for each of the RGBW channels. Is that the problem? Something about using four PWM channels?



I also noticed that if I go to "Launch Web App" / Tools, I can use the buttons for 100% Red, 100% Blue, 100% Green and 100% Cool all work, but 100% Warm does nothing.



I know the RGBW strip I am using has a dedicated White LED, and mine happen to be Warm (not Cool), so I am not sure why there are different buttons for Warm/Cool in the Tools. I thought maybe the 100% Cool button would use the RGB LEDs to make a cool white, and the 100% Warm button would use the dedicated White channel. Is that configurable?

(sorry for stacking two questions in this post)

Look at the Flags page and play with them. The 24th looks good.

My firmware is old, I don't know if the Flag numbers will match yours.

Flag 24 did sound like it might do the trick, but when I turn that on the White LEDs stop working and the RGB LEDs just 'emulate' the white channel. In fact, the controller just completely stops using channel 4, so I have disabled that flag again.

Do I need to configure the pins differently? My LED strip is pretty simple, but I don't know what the model is. They are not individually addressable so there is no IC chip and no data wires, just the ground wire and then 4 channels, one for each LED. Even the Tasmota guide for the Magic Home controller talks about using PWM, so I assumed PWM was the right setting for this strip.



I don't understand why the YAML is making 4 individual lights instead of a single RGBW Light?

And to get these in Home Assistant, do I need to configure something in MQTT? I thought discovery was enabled by default.

I don't know if Home Assistant Discovery is already implemented for BL602. The author of the firmware or someone who has this device could confirm this for you.

If it were in your case, I would load version 1.15.383 and do an initial RGB only configuration with the YAML that I provided to try to find out why the Light/RGB entity (only RGB at the moment) does not appear in Home Assistant.

I have the same device in RGB version and with that firmware and that manual configuration it works. The RGB channels are the same as yours:
P3 --> PWM 1 Red
P4 --> PWM 0 Green
P21 --> PWM 2 Blue

mqtt:
light:
- unique_id: "OpenBL_LED"
name: "OpenBL_LED"
rgb_command_template: "{{ '#%02x%02x%02x0000' | format(red, green, blue)}}"
rgb_value_template: "{{ value[0:2]|int(base=16) }},{{ value[2:4]|int(base=16) }},{{ value[4:6]|int(base=16) }}"
rgb_state_topic: "obl-b396-mhled/led_basecolor_rgb/get"
rgb_command_topic: "cmnd/obl-b396-mhled/led_basecolor_rgb"
command_topic: "cmnd/obl-b396-mhled/led_enableAll"
state_topic: "obl-b396-mhled/led_enableAll/get"
availability_topic: "obl-b396-mhled/connected"
payload_on: 1
payload_off: 0
brightness_command_topic: "cmnd/obl-b396-mhled/led_dimmer"
brightness_state_topic: "obl-b396-mhled/led_dimmer/get"
brightness_scale: 100

Hey, good suggestion spin55! I did not try an older version, but I did remove the settings from the white channel pin.

Apparently having a fourth PWM channel is not being handled like I need it to. With only the RGB channels set, it generated some very different YAML code than before and similar to what you posted:



and Home Assistant Discovery did send the message to the MQTT broker on the "homeassistant" topic!



This was picked up by HA and now there is a device named "obl-b396-mhled" with a "Light" entity that I am able to use the strip with the color LEDs...but not the white. Still, that's progress!



Any suggestions how I can help getting this working with all four channels?

This thread talks about an RGBW strip with a BK7231N chip and it seems that the problem was solved with flag 24. Since you have already experienced this and it has not worked, the question arises: Is it implemented on the BL602 platform?

https://www.elektroda.com/rtvforum/topic3962379.html#20471373

On the other hand, from reading this extensive thread I have not been able to deduce if the firmware for the RGBW strips with BL602 chip is already implemented. So we will have to ask p.kaczmarek2.

https://www.elektroda.com/rtvforum/topic3889041-330.html

I checked the code and it really looks like it should work. I also added a self-test to Window build and it passes it.

I have no idea what's wrong at the moment, so I added this debug log:

Can you update to latest build (it will be available in 15 minutes), of course don't power off during update, and try new version and check what does the log say? What are the seen PWM counts?

Of course, I assume that:
- you have 4 PWMs set
- you have enabled flag 24 (OBK_FLAG_LED_EMULATE_COOL_WITH_RGB)
It will not work otherwise with 4 PWMs at the moment. You would get that error:

of course, first set flag, then do discovery.

Added after 1 [minutes]:

MrShannon wrote:

GPIO3 = PWM, Channel 1 (red)
GPIO4 = PWM, Channel 2 (green)
GPIO21 = PWM, Channel 3 (blue)
GPIO20 = PWM, Channel 4 (white)
GPIO12 = IRRecv

Can you try:

skip channel 4 (which is emulated) ?

I updated to 1.17.257, but whenever I add a fourth PWM pin the YAML that is shown in the "Home Assistant Cfg" page creates four "unique_id:" entries. This happens if I use Channel 4 or channel 5, and if Flag 24 is on or not.





The odd thing is, when I hit "Start Home Assistant Discovery", it sent the same discovery message as if it still only had 3 pins configured. It's as if adding the 4th pin isn't being processed somehow.



I watched the logs on the OpenBeken Web App and, there were a LOT of messages about "secondsWithNoPing" in there, but here's what I saw when I would make changes. It's also worth noting that there was only activity in the log when I change the pin configuration. There were no log entries when I changed the flag.

I set Flag 24 OFF and removed the fourth PWM channel. This made a YAML configuration for RGB with only one unique_id for "OpenBL_LED_light" and posted a discovery message to Home Assistant


Leave Flag 24 OFF and add a 4th PWM pin on channel 5. This created a YAML configuration with four unique_id's "OpenBL_LED_light_1", "OpenBL_LED_light_2", "OpenBL_LED_light_3" and "OpenBL_LED_light_5" but did not send any messages to Home Assistant.


Turn Flag 24 ON and remove the 4th PWM pin. This made the same YAML configuration for RGB (no W) with only one unique_id for "OpenBL_LED_light" and posted a discovery message to Home Assistant


Leave Flag 24 ON and add the 4th PWM pin on Channel 5 again. This created the same YAML configuration with four unique_id's "OpenBL_LED_light_1", "OpenBL_LED_light_2", "OpenBL_LED_light_3" and "OpenBL_LED_light_5" but did not send any messages to Home Assistant.


Does that help?

MrShannon wrote:

Leave Flag 24 ON and add the 4th PWM pin on Channel 5 again. This created the same YAML configuration with four unique_id's "OpenBL_LED_light_1", "OpenBL_LED_light_2", "OpenBL_LED_light_3" and "OpenBL_LED_light_5" but did not send any messages to Home Assistant.

Code: Text

Log in, to see the code

Does that help?

why do you think that it didn't publish any messages? Log clearly says:

I am starting to suspect that we need to increase some kind of MQTT buffer for BL602 because it seems messages of certain larger lengths seems to be skipped...

p.kaczmarek2 wrote:

Why do you think that it didn't publish any messages?

That's a fair question. What I shared from the logs was what happened after I would change the PIN settings and hit Save on the "Configure Module" page. When I changed the Flags or when I hit "Start Home Assistant Discovery" is when nothing would get posted to MQTT. It seems that changing the PIN settings was automatically posting the discovery message, which is good, but I was unable to do it manually.

That, and the YAML being generated when I set up 4 channels doesn't look right, so even if I could force it, I think it would be...bad.

When I only have the three channels configured, Home Assistant only shows the RGB color picker


But, after you pointed out the discovery message was posted after adding the 4th channel, I looked again and realized that the Light Entity in Home Assistant now has both an RGB and W control.


The odd part is that the controller is allowing both the RGB and W LEDs to be on at the same time. I can turn off Flag 24 to prevent both from being on, but then "Cool White" no longer works.


This is pretty different from how the Magic Home controller manages things. There, the Light entity shows an RGB and W control, but the W is just an on/off button and not a color temperature picker. The White LEDs on the strip are a fixed temperature and only their brightness can be adjusted. Here's an example of the same hardware under Magic Home.



Is there a flag I should be setting to make the OpenBeken controller behave like this?

Yaml generation for 4 channels is not implemented, but the discovery should work.

Your previous post indicates that HASS Discovery for RGBW does not reach the HA, so I increased the MQTT buffer for BL602:
https://github.com/openshwprojects/OpenBL602/commit/e5769160cfc91a5fe36f040b3d5314e51eda3a28
Can you update and recheck? Namely, I am referring to what I've written in post #13

Sorry, this took longer to reply than I wanted, but I did update to 1.17.261 and went through a couple of actions. The behavior doesn't seem any different than before, and I haven't figured out how to configure an RGBW (RGB and single dedicated/fixed White color) instead of an RGBCW (RGB and both Cool and Warm white colors).

I've also removed all of the "secondsWithNoPing" lines, but here are the logs:

Leave Flag 24 off, and set a fourth channel to PWM on channel 5


Turn Flag 24 on, then remove the fourth PWM channel


Finally, leave Flag 24 on and add the fourth PWM channel


After that, I disabled Flag 24 to prevent the RGB and W channels from being used at the same time, but that did not create any events in the log.

Then I rebooted it just to see the log entries and saw a few things of interest.

First, the password for the Wifi SSID -and- the MQTT is clearly in the logs... this might be ok for debugging, but I'd recommend not doing that on a real release. It would make sharing logs potentially dangerous! Maybe replace the clear text password with '***' or something?


Second, there is a message about the "IR" driver being "not known", is that just meaning future work is needed to implement the IR controller?


And finally, there was an error about 'startScript NOT found' - not sure if that really matters either at this point.


Thank you for all the interaction on this, I really do appreciate it!

Is there a configuration or flag that I can set to expose the controls for an RGB color selector and brightness, but the White LEDs are just on/off/brightness without a color temp? Like this:



My controller/strip has only a dedicated Warm LED, and if I switch from the RGB to the White channel, the temperature picker is not appropriate. Sliding the picker all the way to warm basically sets the White LEDs to 100% brightness, and sliding to cold just turns them off because there are no Cool LEDs to turn on.

I've updated to 1.17.276 and found if I turn on Flag 24 the RGB LEDs will emulate the Cool White. This also means adjusting the color temp basically adjusts the brightness of the W and RGB channels to create the selected color temperature. This also means all of the LEDs on the strip would be on at the same time, and I'm not sure if that's... safe?

If possible, I'd prefer to have the White channel only allow on/off/brightness settings and to not provide a color temp option. That would prevent all the LEDs in the strip from being on at the same time, but I could switch between a color selection and white.