Smartlada revC

SmartLada — smart VAZ-2106 tail light

Firmware and custom hardware for a "smart" VAZ-2106 tail light: PWM dimming of the four lamps (turn / brake / marker / reverse) with a local OLED menu, animation effects, and Zigbee control from a Yandex Station (Alice). Runs on a custom board that drops into the light housing and is powered over USB-C PD.

Project page: smartlada.saschapo.me (source in site/).

The current, primary firmware is SmartLadaRevC/ — it targets the Rev C product board and is what the project ships. Everything else in the tree is either the hardware design or earlier development stages (see Lineage).

Main firmware — SmartLadaRevC

ESP32-C6-WROOM-1 firmware for the Rev C board. Four PWM lamp channels (low-side MOSFET, gamma + soft-start), an OLED menu with four buttons, pluggable effects, and a Zigbee end device exposing five endpoints to Alice (four individual lamps + a "Fara" master/effects device). Local control and Zigbee share one state (config::s, last-writer-wins).

Full details: SmartLadaRevC/README.md.

Hardware (Rev C board)

_{Rev C, KiCad render. Top: ESP32-C6 module, buck, PD trigger, four lamp MOSFETs with Faston outputs. Bottom: the silkscreen carries the VAZ-2106 tail-light exploded view from the parts catalogue ("ФОНАРИ ЗАДНИЕ").}

• MCU: ESP32-C6-WROOM-1-N16 (integrated on the board).
• Power in: USB-C PD, 12 V / 3 A trigger (CH224K). 12 V feeds the lamps directly; a TPS54202 buck makes 3.3 V for the MCU/OLED. No 12 V → holds 5 V (logic alive, lamps dark). Recommended PSU: COMMO Core (a model with a 12 V/3 A PDO).
• Lamp switches: 4× AOD4184 N-MOSFET (low-side, gate active-high), outputs on 6.3 mm Faston tabs with a common +12 V. Lamps: 12 V incandescent (e.g. 10+10+10+5 W).
• UI: SSD1315 OLED (I²C) + 4 buttons on connector J4, cabled out of the housing.
• Diagnostics: 6× red 0805 LEDs (4 channels + 12 V + 3.3 V); PG (power-good) → GPIO.

Board design (KiCad, BOM, fabrication): custom_pcb/smartlada_revC/.

Build & flash

Zigbee end-device build, Serial over native USB:

FQBN="esp32:esp32:esp32c6:ZigbeeMode=ed,PartitionScheme=zigbee_8MB,CDCOnBoot=cdc,FlashSize=16M"
arduino-cli compile -b "$FQBN" SmartLadaRevC
arduino-cli upload  -b "$FQBN" -p /dev/cu.usbmodemXXXX SmartLadaRevC

Bench variant with the 2.4" TFT + encoder module in place of the OLED + keys: build flag UI_TFT, see SmartLadaRevC/README.md.

Plan and resume notes: SmartLadaRevC/DEV_PLAN.md, SmartLadaRevC/SESSION_HANDOFF.md.

Lineage

The firmware grew through several stages; the earlier ones are kept for reference:

• sketches/SmartLada/ — first bring-up bench on an ESP8266 (calibration, OLED). Its channels/ and config/ layers seeded the ESP32 port.
• SmartLadaC6/ — ESP32-C6 on a MuseLab nanoESP32-C6 dev board: LEDC PWM, Wi-Fi AP + web UI, test modes. First C6 firmware.
• SmartLadaRevB/ — display-based firmware (OLED menu + effects) on the Rev B board; direct predecessor to Rev C (Rev C forks its src/ layers).
• SmartLadaRevC/ — current product firmware (this board + Zigbee).

Hardware history lives under custom_pcb/ (Rev A → Rev B → Rev C); research and architecture notes under research/; experimental sketches under sketches/.

Project context (Russian)

Historical planning/context documents, kept in Russian on purpose:

• PROJECT_2106_SMART_LIGHT.md — decisions, hardware, architecture, plan.
• VAZ2106_Smart_Lamp_Context.md — earlier context document.
• TASK_smartlada_bench_esp8266.md — ESP8266 bench spec (done).
• schematic_2106_ESP32.md — early wiring schematic.

Chat and .md documentation are in Russian; firmware code, comments, and identifiers are in English.