Support for IOTTIMER WiFi Clock

[stefan-oskamp]

The following ESP-12 based alarm clock looks very nice and is very hacking-friendly.

Product developer page:
https://mastergong.cn/archives/364.html

Aliexpress:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006684061080.html

The naming of the item is not very consistent. IOTTIMER seems to be a series of similar items. This model is called "WHEN" but the print on the back says "THEN" -- logical isn't it.

I have bought one and I would like to run Tasmota on it. I currently use an XY-Clock with Tasmota as my smart-home-integrated alarm clock. (I had contributed the TM1650 display driver for it.) The IOTTIMER clock has a bigger display and, most importantly, has a proper enclosure.

Initially, the clock opens its own WiFi. The description explains how to enter your WiFi credentials. The form is in Chinese. Filling it in is not complicated, but you have to know that the left button (at the bottom) is the OK button. Once the clock is in your WiFi, you can look up its address in your router and connect to it. The second entry from the bottom in the main menu is "System" settings where you can change the language to English (just search for the drop-down list that contains "English" and press OK. The language does not change immediately, though.

The software is rather complete for an alarm clock, but a bit complicated. For integrating it in your smart home environment, you could trace the POST requests of the web GUI in your browser and mimic settings from you smart home central by sending the proper JSON to it. However, I prefer replacing the firmware with Tasmota.

To flash new firmware, you could just open the RTC battery compartment on the back and connect to the D0/GND/TX/RX/VCC pads that are marked accordingly. But, of course, you wouldn't know how to configure Tasmota.

For reverse engineering, you can open the clock by peeling off the display cover. (Leave the protective film on the display cover.) Slide in a prying tool at the edge and carefully lift it off the LED mask. There are two narrow strips of double-sided tape; one between the two hour digits and one to the right of the minute digits. You can then unscrew and remove the display board. After that, you can remove the controller board. The display mask is snapped onto the display board and can be easily removed. The whole thing is very nicely designed and easy to disassemble and re-assemble.

The controller board contains an ESP-12 module (ESP8266) and an RTC (R8010). It also holds the RTC battery, the three push buttons, a buzzer, and a temperature sensor (M1601).

On the display board there is a TM1640 controller, the LEDs, and the ambient light sensor.

The two boards are connected by six wires with a connector on either end.

I traced a couple of connections on the controller board. I need to complete that and document it (plus the connections on the display board (between the connector and the TM1640 and the temperature sensor).

There seems to be no Tasmota display driver for the TM1640 and no Tasmota RTC driver for the R8010. My plan is to create these based on other TM16xx and RTC drivers, respectively.

If anyone else owns such a clock or has experience with the TM1640 or R8010, I encourage you to contribute to the discussion.

Edit:

• Corrected information about temperature sensor and ambient light sensor.
• Added photos

[s-hadinger]

The protocol for TM1640 looks very simple. Happy to provide you any needed support to develop the drivers.

Since it's ESP8266 based, no possibility to use Berry. You will need to go for C++

[stefan-oskamp]

Yeah, did the same for the XY-Clock, i.e., created the TM1650 driver in C++ based on similar code.

[MacSass]

Interesting - thanks for sharing and good luck with the drivers, although I find it a bit on the expensive side with 27€ here from AliExpress. Roughly 4 times the price of XYclock, although the enclosure is nice of course. Similar "non wifi" models are available for about 1/3 of the price.

Also I´d be interested to understand how "dark" you can dim the LED as I was looking for this being my night clock with only very dim light at night (the XY is way to bright even on lowest level).

Looks like we will be seeing more and more "wifi clocks" from Chinese manufacturers (here is another one https://de.aliexpress.com/item/1005006744696913.html), guess it is only a matter of time until some with ESP32 crop up too.

I´ll keep watching - but although being a wifi-clock aficionado I´m currently not getting that model :-) - good luck!

[s-hadinger]

Awesome.

About Led darkness, the current Tasmota implementation uses 10 bits (1024 levels), so the darkest you can get out-of-the-box is 1/1024th of the full power. This might seem too light for a night clock.

The bad news is that we are quite limited on ESP8266, because it is entirely interrupt driven. The PWM interrupt driver took years to stabilize. While in theory we could do better, nobody is willing to reopen the interrupt driver implementation.

On ESP32 (including ESP32C3), PWM is hardware based so we could much more easily tweak the resolution.

I'm just hoping that the manufacturers will quickly move to ESP32C3 or even ESP32C2 (ESP8684)

[stefan-oskamp]

The PWM for the LEDs is done by the TM16xx controllers. Brightness is controlled over I2C with seven levels resolutions (plus 0, IIRC). So that should not be an issue.

The IOTTIMER clock has display screen that is quite dark. It's not one of these mirror-type screens that you see a lot in cheap clocks on Aliexpress. It has a smooth black tint. I can provide a comparison picture of the XY-Clock and the IOTTIMER clock once I have re-assembled the latter.

BTW: The sensor on the display board actually is the photo resistor. The original firmware controls the display brightness based on the ambient light.

[s-hadinger]

Interesting enough, it is now out of stock on Alix

[MacSass]

A comparison of the display on low-level would be great!
Also if you don´t mind a picture of the disassembled clock would be interesting to see .. thanks!
Wondering if the temperature sensor inside makes any sense or if it gets heated up by the electronics / display ...

[Jason2866]

For clock addicted people ;-) This one looks nice too. Could imagine that the matrix LEDs are driven from the esp8266

[MacSass]

As we seem to be the "wifi clock addicted self-help group" here - just today I found a very nice "nixie" style clock that uses small LCD or OLEDs to fake real nixie tubes.

It´s driven by an ESP32 as you can see from a video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWBmsEkEooA

The "original" design is fairly expensive, but there are several clones that start at around 34€ at AliExpress:
https://de.aliexpress.com/item/1005006796853777.html

Some guys already developed alternat firmware here:
https://www.nixies.us/projects/elekstubeips-clock/elekstube-ips-v1/

Would be interesting to find out if that could run Tasmota as well. Does Tasmota support more than one display at a time?

I´m tempted to get one to add to my wifi clock collection ;-)

[sfromis]

#define USE_MULTI_DISPLAY should allow up to 3 displays.

[barbudor]

but then MAX_MULTI_DISPLAYS can be overridden

#ifdef USE_MULTI_DISPLAY

#ifndef MAX_MULTI_DISPLAYS
#define MAX_MULTI_DISPLAYS 3
#endif

it only seems to drive the size of that array:

struct MULTI_DISP {
  Renderer *display;
  uint16_t fg_color;
  uint16_t bg_color;
  int16_t disp_xpos;
  int16_t disp_ypos;
  uint8_t color_type;
  uint8_t auto_draw;
  uint8_t model;
  uint8_t used;
} displays[MAX_MULTI_DISPLAYS];

[MacSass]

For that Nixie thingie it obviously would have to be 6.
I have never looked at Tasmota and displays - but I´m really tempted to get one now ... 34€ is not too bad and I like the look ...

[MacSass]

Yes - I admit:
I suffer from WCAS (Wifi Clock Addiction Syndrom) - could not resist it any longer and just ordered the Nixie clock from the link above :-)

[sfromis]

Another good candidate for a Tasmota clock is the Unexpected Maker Bling! with 8x40 neopixels (spacing 2 mm), RTC chip, I2S audio (speaker connector and onboard mic), ESP32-S3 with PSRAM, buttons, battery connector, SD card and Stemma connector. Somewhat similar to the Ulanzi TC001, but better specs and much smaller. Still not cheap....