View at [https://thibmaek.com/posts/overview/1]

3 meters (electricity, heating & water) created via EnergieID's webhook integration.

EnergieID webhooks

3 Home Assistant RESTful Command services which we can call to update our meters

EnergieID rest commands HA

Creating an input helper for the electricity meter with a unit of kWh

ha energieid helpers

A new "Run" script with a sequence to update all meters by sending the state from the inputs to the restful commands / webhook we created earlier

ha energie id script

A Lovelace (UI) card with our inputs and the button so submit them to EnergieID

ha lovelace energieid

Simple first steps toward integrating EnergieID into Home Assistant.

🔋 Consumption monitoring with EnergieID & Home Assistant

I came up with these really minimal Lovelace cards to represent who is home, based on person entities in Home Assistant.

![Screenshot 2020-08-20 at 14.48.04](//images.ctfassets.net/vzyw32ih2a4n/1MFZjBUhE74okfsymQ6o4g/b3efd0c1791ecd011fb375ed2550dd81/Screenshot_2020-08-20_at_14.48.04.png)

It's based on this excellent [button-card](https://github.com/custom-cards/button-card) for Lovelace. I find the config options for button-card to be a bit overwhelming though.

![Screenshot 2020-08-20 at 14.48.14](//images.ctfassets.net/vzyw32ih2a4n/4r5DivYGkqdWCZsOoGKL3k/6d559697f20fbcb5a3a75984e824abd1/Screenshot_2020-08-20_at_14.48.14.png)

The badge indicates how much battery there is left for an entity tracking the person entity. It will change to red if it drops below 20 percent.

Config for 1 person looks like this, I then stack them with vertical-stack to make it ✨ NICE ON MOBILE ✨:

```yaml
aspect_ratio: 3/1
custom_fields:
  battery: |
    [[[
      return `${
        states['sensor.thibaults_iphone_battery_level_2'].state
      }`
    ]]]
entity: person.thibault
layout: icon_name
show_entity_picture: true
show_name: true
state:
  - name: "🏡 Thibault (Home)"
    styles:
      name:
        - color: '#7DDA9F'
    value: home
  - name: "🏃‍♂️ Thibault (Away)"
    styles:
      name:
        - color: '#93ADCB'
    value: not_home
  - styles:
      name:
        - color: gray
    value: unknown
styles:
  custom_fields:
    battery:
      - position: absolute
      - left: 110px
      - border-radius: 50%
      - height: 30px
      - width: 30px
      - font-size: 14px
      - line-height: 30px
      - padding: 5px
      - color: |-
          [[[
            return states['sensor.thibaults_iphone_battery_level_2'].state > 20
            ? 'white'
            : 'black'
          ]]]
      - background-color: |-
          [[[
            return states['sensor.thibaults_iphone_battery_level_2'].state > 20
              ? '#7DDA9F'
              : 'red'
          ]]]
  icon:
    - width: 60%
type: 'custom:button-card'
```

Lovelace cards showing presence for me and my girlfriend

Screenshot 2020-08-20 at 14.48.04

button-card YAML config example for a presence card

Screenshot 2020-08-20 at 14.48.14

Minimal clean presence-cards for person entities using custom button-card

🃏 Simple Lovelace presence cards for Home Assistant

My holidays just started. Threw together this quick lunch to kickstart the upcoming two weeks of not doing much and enjoying time off.

It has everything you want right now. Spice, tanginess from the kumquat and cardamom and freshness from the squid and the mint. Get your ass to the kitchen for this ghetto recipe and make yourself an amazing lunch in 10 minutes.

![Holiday Squid](//images.ctfassets.net/vzyw32ih2a4n/x9FIe2EhCxKXL2w83ZiVx/456931739daa8e11ff0ab3f35abad85a/IMG_0300.jpeg)

## Ingredients

- Some kumquats (they're in season right now)
- Squid (a head or some calamares, anything goes really)
- Mint
- Cardamom pods
- Small chili
- Sumac (optional)
- Spring onion (optional)

## Making it

1. Rinse off a kumquat or 4
2. Set a grill pan to the highest temperature so it can get blazing hot.
3. Slice kumquat in rings, as thin as possible. You can use a mandoline but I prefer a _fucking sharp_ knife
4. Do the same for a small chili. You can deseed it if you want to.
5. Put the slices together in a small bowl
6. In a mortar & pestle bash/grind the seeds of a few cardamom pods, then add a pinch of coarse sea salt (or fleur de sel) and some sumac to the mortar.
7. Add the spices in the mortar to the kumquat & chili slices and then add a lug of your best olive oil. Combine everything with a spoon, fork or your fingers.
8. Rub some olive oil on your squid so it won't stick to the pan, season with a little bit of coarse salt.
9. Grill squid a few minutes each side. Two minutes each side works well, you want those lovely char marks. If it curls up, press it down with a plate or a cooking spatula a bit.
10. Dress squid on the plate, toss over kumquat & chili 'salad' and garnish with some fresh mint (or cilantro) and spring onion. A final mini-drizzle of good olive oil tops it off

Get a glass of white wine, a nice chilled dry vermouth and enjoy it babies. I think it's wonderful.

Enjoy the holidays, don't fuss too much and eat some good food.
Peace ✌🏻

🦑 Spicey / Tangy holiday squid

__UPDATE: Devices sold by Action under the LSC brand are no longer being manufactured with Espressif's ESP chips but instead use WB2S. Flashing them with tuya-convert is impossible with this chip, their might be a hardware UART but that is to be discovered...__

__UPDATE: It seems that Action is now selling revisions of the LSC hardware with a newer Tuya firmware. This means it is no longer possible to flash these using the tuya-convert method below because a new PSK has been implemented by Tuya.__

My quest on [flashing custom firmwares and controlling](https://thibmaek.com/post/bringing-mqtt-and-http-to-cheap-budget-store-remote-switches) budget switches sold at Action discount store continues!

Recently, Action started selling a big amount of [LSC Smart Connect](https://www.action.com/nl-be/search/?q=lsc+smart+connect) devices that are compatible with Google Home and Alexa. These devices are so called 'Tuya' devices that work with a cloud service but can be easily flashed. I quickly got one and decided to give it a go.

# Hardware flashing

Initially, I set out to flash it directly on the chip using an FTDI adapter but when opening it up, quickly realised that would be a big hassle.

These switches use the TYWE2S chip which is an ESP8285 based chip making it compatible with Tasmota and ESPHome.

In order to flash this chip you need to ground a pin to GPIO0 as outlined in [this wiki page](https://github.com/arendst/Sonoff-Tasmota/wiki/CE-Smart-Home---LA-WF3-Wifi-Plug-(TYWE2S)).

The technical sheet for this chip is available [here](https://fccid.io/2ANDL-TYWE2S/User-Manual/Users-Manual-3596121.pdf).

Take note of the following GPIO pinout, which you need for a reference in ESPHome / Tasmota:

```plaintext
gpio 4 is LED (0 = on)
gpio 12 is relay (1 = on)
gpio 14 is switch (0 = pressed)
```

# Software flashing

Some smart people figured out a loophole in the SSL handshake that made this devices able to flash using just a terminal and a mobile phone.

Unfortunately, Tuya issued a patch in January that stopped this software hack from working.

__IN ANY CASE, DO NOT CONNECT THE SWITCH TO THE OFFICIAL TUYA OR LSC APP. THIS WILL DOWNLOAD THE LATEST STOCK FIRMWARE TO THE DEVICE AND POSSIBLY MAKE IT UNFLASHABLE AGAIN.__

Luckily, some other smart people figured out another workaround with tuya-convert and as of September/October, tuya-convert can be used again to flash these switches!

## Using tuya-convert to flash

The steps to flash firmware onto the switch are very simple, you only need a Linux machine with a wireless chip (like a Raspberry Pi Zero W), a mobile phone (I had better results with Android) and physical access to the switch's button.

__Steps below all performed on a RPi Zero W, using a wired ethernet connection and SSH__

```shell
$ sudo apt install git
$ git clone https://github.com/ct-Open-Source/tuya-convert
$ cd tuya-convert
$ ./install_prereq.sh
$ ./start_flash.sh
```

Follow the instructions displayed on screen. tuya-convert will automatically back up the stock firmware so you can flash it again if you'd want to. I copied it over using scp to my laptop, just in case.

## ESPHome

A binary for Tasmota is included in the tuya-convert project, but ESPhome is not MQTT based, nicer looking, has a better API and integrates seamlessly with Home Assistant.

Figuring out how the config should look was rather difficult since I initially based myself on a blogpost from [frenck.dev](https://frenck.dev) but found that the default [Sonoff S20](https://www.esphome.io/devices/sonoff_s20.html) config worked better. The config below is the one I used for flashing.

```yaml
esphome:
  name: lsc_smart_connect_node_bedroom
  platform: ESP8266
  board: esp01_1m

wifi:
  ssid: !secret wifi_ssid
  password: !secret wifi_password

api:
logger:
ota:

binary_sensor:
  - platform: status
    name: "LSC Smart Connect Bedroom Status"
  - platform: gpio
    name: "LSC Smart Connect Bedroom Button"
    pin:
      number: GPIO14
      mode: INPUT_PULLUP
      inverted: true
    internal: true
    on_press:
      - switch.toggle: relay

output:
  - platform: esp8266_pwm
    id: led
    pin:
      number: GPIO4
      inverted: true

light:
  - platform: monochromatic
    id: status_led
    name: "LSC Smart Connect Bedroom Light"
    output: led

switch:
  - platform: gpio
    id: relay
    pin: GPIO12
  - platform: template
    name: "LSC Smart Connect Bedroom Relay"
    optimistic: true
    id: relay_and_light
    turn_on_action:
      - switch.turn_on: relay
      - light.turn_on: status_led
    turn_off_action:
      - switch.turn_off: relay
      - light.turn_off: status_led
```

You can not use ESPHome to flash using a UART connection or OTA, instead you need to create a binary and put it on the machine that flashed using tuya-convert and flash that binary to the LSC switch.

- /home/pi/tuya-convert is where you checked out the git repo for tuya-convert
- The binary __has__ to be renamed to `thirdparty.bin` and __has__ to be in the `files` folder

```shell
# On my laptop which has ESPHome installed:
$ esphome lsc_smart_connect_switch.yaml compile
$ scp lsc_smart_connect_switch/.pioenvs/lsc_smart_connect_switch/firmware.bin pi@raspberrypi.local:/home/pi/tuya-convert

# On the Raspberry Pi Zero that flashed using tuya-convert
$ mv /home/pi/tuya-convert/firmware.bin /home/pi/tuya-convert/files/thirdparty.bin
$ curl http://10.42.42.42/flash3
> Device should flash http://10.42.42.1/files/thirdparty.bin and restart
```

Now wait a few seconds until the device pops up as `lsc_smart_connect_switch.local` on your network, which means it worked. Then quickly check Home Assistant and _voila!_:

![Screenshot 2019-10-06 at 15.43.19](//images.ctfassets.net/vzyw32ih2a4n/1oPYsWtGL9EL4WgEuQJcKo/b54a30f3ccd7347345d62f9947186ec4/Screenshot_2019-10-06_at_15.43.19.png)

You can now use the relay to toggle the switch on and off.

Some finishing notes:
- ~~I did not manage to make the LED respond to the relative switch state. It's possible, I just don't know how.~~ [Oli](https://twitter.com/inframe) helped me and gave me a working config for the LED!
- ~~Do __NOT__ configure a button in ESPHome/Tasmota for the hardware button. Doing this will make the switch auto reset to the firmware stored on the chip every time.~~ This is only true for Tasmota as [@Martidjenn](https://twitter.com/Martidjenn) pointed out to me. The ESPHome config has been updated with the button configured.
- This was trial and error, I also completely bricked a switch when trying to flash, luckily they're only 8.95 EUR.
- Unfortunately, these do not offer power measurement like their counterpart GOSUND switches sold by Amazon. GOSUND can also be flashed by tuya-convert until Tuya issues another patch.
- I did not test reflashing a device again using the same tuya-convert method, nevertheless if you flashed it with ESPHome you should be able to just flash an updated firmware using ESPHome's OTA method.

### More LSC stuff

These are the chip models for most of the LSC Smart Connect devices:

- Switch Plug ESP8285-TYWE2S
- Door Sensor ESP8266-TYWE3S
- PIR Sensor ESP8266-TYWE3S
- Hand Remote RTL8710BN-WR3
- Sirene RTL8710BN-WR3
- Led Strip ESP8266-TYWE3L

_Ref: https://www.letscontrolit.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6955_

### Troubleshooting

- If the flashing takes very long, try again
- Android phones yielded better results connecting to the AP and switch
- I had better chances when I put my switch in flashing mode, __before__ running the `./start_flash.sh` script.
- If you are seeing an error regarding SSL when trying to install the prereqs or flashing make sure you have libssl-dev: `sudo apt install libssl-dev` (not included by default on Raspberry Pi)
- The official ct-Open-Source tuya-convert repo should include the new workaround but if it doesn't work use [this fork](https://github.com/M4dmartig4n/tuya-convert). I used this instead because it was the first one to include the patch bypass and I supose this is the one that got merged into upstream.

Yet another great hack for Action budget smart home devicccces

Thibault Maekelbergh

Developer at In The Pocket at dawn & tech nerd extraordinaire at dusk 🦉

I can't stop learning new stuff

Latest articles

🔋 Consumption monitoring with EnergieID & Home Assistant

🃏 Simple Lovelace presence cards for Home Assistant

🦑 Spicey / Tangy holiday squid

🔌 Flashing ESPHome to LSC Smart Connect (Action) switches / power plugs

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