Andreas Hölldorfer of ChaozLabs wrote an article detailing how he hacked the cheap WiFi LED controller:
This pictures show the PCB. As you can see there are pins labeled as RX,TX,GND,3.3V. I simply connected an USB-Serial converter to the pins. The two other pins are GND and GPIO0. If you set a jumper between this two pins, the controller starts in bootloader mode.More info at ChaozLabs site.
The chip above is a NXP HC245, a 3-state Octal bus transceiver. It is used to drive the N-channel MOSFETS (20N06L – 20 A, 60 V, N−Channel DPAK).
The power supply is a 2 stage design. A AOZ1212 3A Simple Buck Regulator to convert the input voltage to about 5V and an AMS1117 low dropout voltage regulator to get 3.3V.
Check out the video after the break.
