Delonghi Pinguino/Smart Life AC - flashing firmware

[fss-hacks]

Hello,
I have a Delonghi Pinguino that uses a modified Smart Life “Pinguino” application and can also be added to Smart Life for control.
The WiFi name this device projects is ESP_2396AB, which according to my research doesn’t match up with any ESP chips but the MAC address indicates an Espressif device.

This AC seems to be grey market and sold in limited quantities in the US unofficially. It has Alexa etc integration thru Smart Life.

I would like very much to flash this with Esphome and be able to create a config for it. This is my second Esphome device and I’m afraid there aren’t many Tuya ACs in general and I’m the first with this device, so I lack many valuable pieces of info including the type of sensors this device uses or its GPIO. It’s almost impossible to open so getting access to the module isn’t in the cards.

Does anyone have suggestions how to start flashing this? How can I make a backup of the existing firmware? This AC is many years old at this point so I’m not that worried about it breaking etc.

[uzlonewolf]

Those names are usually "ESP_" followed by the last 6 digits of the MAC address. You're going to need to open it up to see what chip it uses, but something of that vintage is probably going to be an ESP8266.

[fss-hacks]

I’m assuming it’s a 8266 but it refuses to work with tuya-convert despite giving a SmartLife WiFi SSID. What other scripts/code exists to exploit this? Cloudcutter shouldn’t work, right?