A maker named Myrik has replaced the notoriously unreliable Nanoleaf panel controller with a bare ESP32, publishing the full project as LeafBus on GitHub. Nanoleaf has sold modular geometric LED panels for roughly a decade, but their proprietary controllers fail regularly and are not easily replaced through official channels.
The swap works because Nanoleaf publishes its own firmware, apparently without restriction. Myrik made only minor modifications to get it running on the ESP32. Once connected to the panel string, each tile self-reports its physical position and orientation over a single data bus. The ESP32 reads that bus without issue and broadcasts its status over the network, making the whole array compatible with any third-party lighting control software.
A companion Reddit thread has surfaced additional community fixes for dead controllers, worth reading alongside the GitHub repo. The technical detail that makes this worth a full read is how the panel topology discovery works over that single bus, and exactly what firmware changes were required. This is also a clean case study for anyone reverse-engineering proprietary LED hardware before it hits the landfill.
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