WiFi lighting protocol suggestion

Hardware Home Automation
1

I’m looking for suggestions on a TCP/IP based lighting protocol.

I have ~60x Milight down lights installed throughout the house and am very happy with the fitting and light output. What I’m not a fan of is the control side for two main reasons:

  • The lights use the older Milight protocol and only support relative commands when adjusting colour temperature and brightness - e.g. “warmer”, “cooler”, “brighter”, “dimmer” rather than “set brightness to 80%”.
  • The protocol is one way, so there is no feedback if a light successfully changed state or not.

Looking at the drivers for the lights themselves, I get relatively easy access to a 3v3 supply, and to two FETs which I can drive via PWM (one for warm white, the second for cool white). So by using ESP8266 modules, for only a few dollars each light, I could covert them so each bulb is WiFi connected.

I started looking at using this project in conjunction with existing LiFx support in Openhab: https://github.com/area3001/esp8266_lifx , but I’m wondering if there is a more open protocol available instead. I don’t mind getting my hands dirty on both the ESP8266 firmware or Openhab binding code, but the least time required, the better.

Any suggestions?

2

Maybe ESPEasy firmware (supports PWM (1,2) and openHAB MQTT) is something you could use. Connection to openHAB is done through a MQTT broker (a lot of people are using mosquitto) and the MQTT binding.

3

Perfect, exactly the sort of thing I was looking for.
I have a few ESP8266 modules on order.