Enabling Zigbee in Bluetooth LE temperature and humidity monitors from Xiaomi and Qingping using Telink TLSR8258 WiSoC

Qingping CGDK2 and Xiaomi LYWSD03MMC Bluetooth LE (BLE) temperature and humidity monitors based on Telink TLSR8258 can be switched to Zigbee thanks to a custom firmware flashed over-the-air.

Telink TLS8258 is a multi-protocol wireless microcontroller supporting Bluetooth LE 5, Bluetooth Mesh, Zigbee, RF4CE, Thread, 6LoWPAN, HomeKit, ANT, and 2.4GHz proprietary and found in boards such as the LILYGO T-Zigbee and various products. Some products only enable one wireless protocol, for example, Bluetooth LE as in the just-mentioned Qingping and Xiaomi monitors, but “SmartHomeScene” has found out that it was possible to switch from BLE to Zigbee on those by simply updating the firmware.

The Telink TLS8258 devices mentioned above will publish data over BLE every 10 minutes (unless humidity or temperature changes, in which case data is transmitted immediately) with the default firmware, but Zigbee can be enabled by using the pvvx custom firmware for the following models:

• Xiaomi LYWSD03MMC
• Qingping CGDK2
• Xiaomi MiaoMiaoCe MHO-C401
• Xiaomi MiaMiaoCe MHO-C122

Both custom BLE and Zigbee firmware are available for these devices, and you have to select one of the wireless standards. There’s no need to open the device although flashing through a USB-to-serial adapter is possible, and most people will prefer to go with one of the two OTA firmware update methods, either the “devbis” or “pvvx” method as explained in the aforelinked post by SmartHomeScene along with the instructions to connect the Zigbee devices with Home Assistant through the Zigbee2MQTT integration.

The switch is mostly useful for people preferring to use Zigbee over BLE in their Smart Home setup. Battery life should not be impacted too much, and the pvvx firmware’s features list mentions over one year of battery with either BLE or Zigbee.

TLS8258-based temperature and humidity monitors are very cheap devices with the Xiaomi LYWSD03MMC selling for $6.07 on Aliexpresss and $17.99 on Amazon, and the Qingping CGDK2 going for $10.13 on Aliexpress.

Thanks to Hedda for the tip.

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