“Smarten” Your RGB Flood Lights with an ESP8266 Module

After purchasing RGB flood lights — which are normally controlled with an IR remote—from Amazon, hacker Thomas Porter decided to upgrade them with smartphone connectivity. After opening them up, he realized that all he had to do was hijack the signals going to each RGB light and implement PWM control.

To accomplish this, he wired in an ESP8266 module, and after some coding, he can modify these accent lights for certain scenes. He’s using an MQTT server in the form of openHAB for control, meaning that integration with Alexa or Google Home is quite easy.

Though he’s employing an ESP module here, there’s no reason that they type of control couldn’t be accomplished using an Arduino or other development board. Just make sure to keep everything (and yourself) properly insulated!

Want to recreate this project for yourself? Check out Porter’s write-up here.