It's not entirely clear where these devices come from originally, but they are available from AliExpress and eBay.
- AliExpress: https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?catId=0&SearchText=H801
- eBay: https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/items/?_nkw=h801
Hardware
The chip used on this board is the ESP8266EX. 5 PWM outputs are connected to DTU35N06 MOSFETs to drive the 5 output channels (RGB + W1 + W2).
| Function | ESP8266 Pin | Channel |
|---|---|---|
| R | GPIO 15 | PWM1 |
| G | GPIO 13 | PWM2 |
| B | GPIO 12 | PWM3 |
| W1 | GPIO 14 | PWM4 |
| W2 | GPIO 04 | PWM5 |
| LED D1(red) | GPIO 05 | |
| LED D2 (green) | GPIO 01 |
Serial Connection
Please see the Hardware Preparation page for general instructions.
You need to access the serial interface. The unpopulated serial header (3V3, RX, TX, GND) are available in the middle of the PCB, right next to J3. Note: the RX and TX pins are labelled from the terminal's perspective, not from the perspective of the ESP chip. This means you should connect the RX and TX pins from your computer's UART to the RX and TX pins on the board respectively, not crossing them over!
To place the board into flashing mode, you will need to short J3. This can remain shorted while flashing is in progress, but you will need to remove the short in order to boot the Tasmota firmware.
First Boot
Most boards supported by the Tasmota firmware use GPIO 1 for serial TX. The H801, as shown in the image above, uses GPIO 2. As the serial RX is still the same as for other boards, it is possible for Tasmota to read from the serial connection but anything written will not be sent to your terminal. Blindly type the following command to set Tasmota to the H801 module type, and it will automatically switch to using GPIO 2 for serial TX allowing setup to proceed:
module 20
See #2155 for more details.
Please be aware that some of the H801 modules were sold with only 512kB of flash. You can check whether yours is affected by using esptool, with the flash_id command. If you only have 512kB of flash, you can still build your own firmware, but will have to remove components that you do not need, in order to reduce the size of the firmware binary. You will also have to use a linker script for the smaller flash. For an example, see this issue
Known Issue
While powering up there is a short but bright light flash emitted from the strip.