The YeeLight and node-red-contrib-yeelite-compat-hue

Peter ScargillGeneral5 Comments on The YeeLight and node-red-contrib-yeelite-compat-hue

My first 9W E27 RGB+White WiFi Yeelight from Banggood arrived this week.

The plan is to run this on Tasmota firmware but as I’m having trouble (as are others) with my Tuya-convert hardware at the moment I ran it initially on the Android YEELIGHT app. Not ideal but they allow a local network mode as well as their normal cloud mode. The APP controls include timing, themes and full colour control as well as white control from orange(ish) all the way through to a cold 6400K – more range than quite a few other RGB lights.

That didn’t last long – I THEN started playing with the the local mode in Node-Red… node-red-contrib-yeelight – but that node (despite being recently updated) seemed to have issues and the reply from the author on Github was not encouraging. So I switched to the older but working node-red-contrib-yeelight-compat-hue. To use this freely available node – I simply set the bulb (in the original Yeelight app) to use “local network” – YEAHHH… and using the above node I get to inject anything we could possibly need as a simple JSON object straight into the node. There is a companion node to read the state of the lamp.

For device ID it is claimed you can use the local IP address or any hostname – I ended up using the IP address, not ideal but WAY better than having to rely on the cloud. If I can figure out how to give the device a hostname (it is either that or a fixed IP , then I can see a use for a lot more of these Yeelight bulbs. I wonder if anyone else has tackled this “local network” mode for these lights?

It is also worth mentioning that the body of the Yeelight is aluminium and quite solid with it. Due to the low total wattage the colours are not the brightest (not complaining) but the white is very good.

Their stock photo is so good I won’t bother with my own pics.

5 thoughts on “The YeeLight and node-red-contrib-yeelite-compat-hue”

  1. Hi Pete
    I started following your posts about 15 months ago after being told about your site from someone in Australia. I’ve used your information to configure two Raspberry Pis. Shortly after starting playing with node-red I managed to connect to my white only Yeelight. I used the info from the Yeelight third party control protocol document. I didn’t use any Yeelight nodes (don’t think I could get them working) just the TCP node with IP address and port. Can’t find the document I used but found one online today after a quick search https://www.yeelight.com/download/Yeelight_Inter-Operation_Spec.pdf I didn’t try the discovery section as the Yeelight bulb was already connected to my network and there is and option in the app to turn on the third party use. I’ve got all the commands and status feedback working through node-red ui and have also connected it locally through node-red to Alexa. As you say in one of your other posts the issue is when someone turns it off at the wall switch. Shame about it not having a bayonet fitting for the UK, but it works ok with an adaptor.

    1. WEll, you’re ahead of me here, Keith – did you use local mode? A brief look at that spec suggests using an address half way around the world.
      So with the Yeelight node and local address 192.168.1.198 and port 55443 – I can turn the light on and off – and change colour etc depending on the message I inject (simple json) (but not always – sometimes I get “stream destroyed” – so I WOULD lpike to know more please. I assume it must be more difficult using the TCP node… so just now, I tried my same payload (not expecting it to work – and it didn’t) into firstly the “tcp out” node” then the “udp out” node. I even tried the “tcp request” node but I’ve NO idea how to use that. Can you make a simple example specifying which node to use and the payload to, say, turn the light on or off? I for one would appreciate being triggered off.

      Regards

      Pete

      1. Morning Pete,
        I’m a bit closer than half way round the world, I’m in southern England spending much time at home with plenty more to come by the sounds of it during these covid times.
        I’ve attached an image of the basic nodes I used to get it working after activating local mode. I’m sure you might be able to make the process more efficient but I didn’t really know much about node-red at the time and as it worked I didn’t change it. Toggle away to your hearts content.

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