Esphome on a Tuya IR Remote Control blaster

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Jeroen Venema
Jeroen Venema
July 25, 2021 11:40

Hi,

The Tuya remote control blasters I received yesterday didn’t have an ESP inside, but the WB3s which is incompatible with ESPhome. I replaced the WB3s by an ESP-12E but couldn’t flash it with the pinouts in the desciption. It turns out they changed the pins for J1 as follows:

1 – 3.3v
2 – RST
3 – TX on the CHIP – RX to the UART TTL module
4 – RX on the CHIP – TX to the UART TTL module
5 – GPIO0, that needs grounding to put the chip in flashing mode
7 – GND

Next to that, they left GPIO15 floating, apparently not used for the WB3s, but necessary for the ESP. Connect it to the GND pin with a small wire.
With this brainsurgery and changes to the pinout, the blaster comes to live and can be used with the exact same esphome yaml as above.

If you need to replace an WB3s as well, make sure to be gentle with a soldering iron as the PCB pads are thin. Best to use a hotair station.

Enjoy!

Diogo
Diogo
May 1, 2022 19:31

Any alternative shop where i can buy this device with esp8266 chip?

David S
David S
May 12, 2023 22:06

I tested replacing the brains with an ESP-12E on the latest tuya blaster being sold on aliexpress. Desoldering was not a smooth process. If someone knows a better way than a hot air station, please let me know! I think the hardest part is there’s a large pad on the underside of the board.
They no longer provide access to all the pins for programming on the board. I ended up following a guide to flash directly to the ESPusing some resistors and capacitor which went smoothly. When testing the functionality, I could turn the LED on and off, the push button would register, but the receiver didn’t seem to work, at least nothing showed up in the logs. Maybe I did something wrong, but things were looking good. Anyway, desoldered the wires I had directly soldered onto the ESP and the blaster won’t turn on anymore. Not sure if it’s worth trying again on another board or just buying some LEDs and make something from scratch.

Sri
Sri
January 18, 2024 12:42

Hi, Thanks for the write up. The methods that you have mentioned above still holds good for the IR blaster that comes with TYWE3S as well. This includes header connection as well as the YAML configuration that you have given. For flashing I have used https://web.esphome.io/ which is web based, does not require any tool to be downloaded. The link will not work on Firefox, it is good with Chrome.

Hades Himself
Hades Himself
September 28, 2024 02:27

I got a few with the Tuya C3BS chip (https://developer.tuya.com/en/docs/iot/cb3s?id=Kai94mec0s076). Tried to get anything from the serial interface, but it seems that Tuya has some sort of built-in flashing protection.

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