Andrew Andrianov's 3D-Printable Programming Clip Makes Mass Flashing of Smart Sockets a Cinch

Developer Andrew Andrianov has designed a little accessory which aims to make the bulk flashing of low-cost off-the-shelf smart power sockets a little less painful, by providing a pogo-pin connector for the device's debug port.

"The problem flashing these modules on bulk is – you have to disassemble and solder the leads to the edge connector," Andrianov explains in a blog post brought to our attention by Adafruit, referring to Beken BK7231N modules found in low-cost off-the-shelf smart power sockets. "It's okay for a one-time solder job, but is a totally no-go when you have to do it in bulk. So, I scratched my head, fired up SolveSpace and after some trial and error made this weird-looking device."

That "weird-looking device" is a clever 3D-printed clip, designed to hold spring-loaded pogo pins. While the hard work on figuring out how to replace the stock firmware with a version compatible with Home Assistant has already been done, the new firmware still needs to be loaded onto each module in turn — a job which usually requires soldering a programming header in place.

"No soldering," Andrianov says of his faster alternative for processing the plugs as quickly as possible. "Just attach it and remove once you are done. I won’t do a full writeup of hacking the firmware. Seems there are a lot of people that have invested a lot of time to make those working. The only relevant details here are: they are also flashed via serial port, much like the ESP8266, they have OpenBeken firmware, that looks much like Tasmota, and [an] ESPHome fork that should be merged pretty soon to ESPHome master."

Andrianov's full write-up is available on his website, while the clip itself has been published to Thingiverse under a Creative Commons Attribution license.