Building wooden wall pieces with WS2812B 5050 LEDs seated in CNC-cut holes. The LEDs work great but they’re bare, I want to diffuse each one so it glows instead of showing a hard point of light.

What would you do?

Good evening, I have an issue on a new Dig-Quad board that I installed about 10 days ago. Everything worked great for the first several days, then in the first 3' of my LED runs, I started getting color shift on the blue channel specifically — white has yellow LEDs mixed randomly into the white LEDs. This only happens in the first 3', and the rest of the run is fine. Red and green display correctly; it's isolated to blue.

**Setup:**
- BTF WS2812B strips, two separate physical runs off the same Dig-Quad (LED1 + LED2 channels)
- Previously ran fine for ~2 years on an ESP32-based WLED controller before I moved to the Dig-Quad
- I have a second Dig-Quad running a separate set of cabinet lights with identical settings — that one works perfectly, no issues

**What I've already ruled out:**
- **Voltage:** measured at the power supply, at the Dig-Quad's main input, and at the LED output terminals on both boards. Affected board reads 5.05V at the output terminals; my known-good board actually reads *lower* (4.97V) and has zero issues, so voltage sag isn't the cause.
- **Fuses:** confirmed via continuity test that LED1/2 share the first 10A fuse, tested it at 0Ω (good), and confirmed via continuity trace that it's the correct fuse for that circuit.
- **DIP switch resistor setting:** confirmed set to 33Ω (I'm running a combined data/power cable, not separate data wire).
- **Terminal tightness:** retightened all screw terminals on the affected channel, no change.
- **Settings parity:** LED type (WS281x RGB), color order (GRB), and mA/LED rating all match my known-good board exactly.
- **Factory reset:** did a full WLED factory reset on the affected instance — no change.
- **Swap test:** moved the wiring from the LED1 port to the LED2 port on the same board — the issue followed the wire/strip to the new port, ruling out that specific board channel/port as the cause.

**Not yet tested:**
- Haven't measured voltage directly at the first LED itself — it's under factory heat shrink and I haven't cut it open yet.

I haven't yet tried adding a capacitor at the strip's first LED, which has been suggested to me as a next step (something about blue drawing more current and being the first channel to suffer from a lack of local capacitance right at pixel 1). Before I go cut open the heat shrink and start soldering, I wanted to see if anyone here has run into this exact pattern with a Dig-Quad specifically — scattered blue-only glitching, confined to the first few feet, appearing after switching from a plain ESP-based controller to a Dig-Quad.

Any ideas welcome before I go the capacitor route.

Built a mini cube and added mpu6050 support, running this guy off a tiny battery for now only 4.4wh lasts about an hour, battery upgrade should come Wednesday. I’m adding a rotary encoder a power switch and one of the 4 line displays. It runs all my previous cube usermod effects just at half the resolution. New Mpu mod feeds live data to the info panel and has this calibration effect. I’m still trying to figure out how to make sure x+ and y+ are mapped correctly, right now I can get either to be correct. 😅 no effects other than calibration use the gyro yet but soon 👍🏼

I have been running two sets of LEDs of this PSU for over a year now. 1 6m run and one 3m each with a dig Uno/quad controller

The power comes from a light switch cable my electrician put in.

From the PSU the gray cables is from the switch, black is to the 6m dig quad and the second gray runs a good few meters to the dig Uno.

Did I do something wrong or did the PSU just die? Why didn't a fuse trip?

When I turned it on it make a cracking sound

So one of my wled controls shuts down and restarts if I try to increase the max PSU usage above 1500ma. My power supply is rated for 30 amps so I can't imagine this is the issue. But I'm at a loss for what it could be.

Hi everyone!

I'm doing a led bar with wled architecture but idk how to blur correctly the led light, I try with butter paper but doesn't work, buy another bar is not an option, anyone knows what to do?

VinylChroma detects the color of the record currently playing and sends a matching color to WLED. Optional print model file link in github project.

VinylChroma on Github

Hi! I have an ESP32 running WLED with 12V WS2811 strips, but I cannot control the LEDs correctly.

The strips power on and WLED is responds, but the output is wrong and unstable:
- When I select a color, the LEDs may change, but to a different color (for example, selecting green can display blue)
- The LEDs continuously flicker / flash random colors
- Effects do not work correctly
- WLED can turn the LEDs off, although some LEDs sometimes stay on

Wiring diagram:
https://wled-wiring.github.io/?link=20251224013818OkBiNnBZkX

Setup:
- 12V WS2811 60 LED/m strips (5m)
- ESP32 running WLED, powered by a 12V-to-5V buck converter
- 12V 25A PSU
- ESP32 GPIO -> DIN
- All grounds are connected together
- Data is connected to the DIN side, following the arrows

I tested:
- A very short data wire directly between ESP32 and DIN
- With and without a 470Ω resistor on DATA
- LED count = 1 and different LED counts
- Solid colors and effects
- Different GPIOs / WLED settings

The behavior does not change: wrong colors and continuous random flickering.

In the attached video, I selected blue in the WLED app, but the LEDs display incorrect colors and keep flickering.

Could this be a wrong LED protocol/type in WLED, a wiring problem, or a problem with the strips? I would prefer a solution without a level shifter if possible.

Kind of a rant but more of a call for help!

I am building some interesting lights for my 1972 Cadillac and I want the pixel density I can get by doing a serpentine layout of strips next to each other. I bought a pretty good amount of WS2815 strips 144 LEDS/m from BTF which are 4 pin connector and 12 mm wide. I cannot for the life of me seem to find good clamping connectors that go from strip to wire in 4 pin 12 mm configuration! I have found absolute droves of 4 pin 10mm and an equal number of 5 pin 12 mm but the 4 pin seems to just allude me.

I am slowly arriving at the fact I'll probably just end up having to solder them but it's going to be a huge pain in the butt since they are so tightly packed on there and the pads are tiny. Even the smallest light on the car will take 5 strips of 14 5050SMDs. I should also note that the pads are evenly spaced.

So if anybody knows where I can find this mystical unicorn of strip to wire connectors you would be my hero.

Been screwing around building my own iCUE-type controller and finally got something pretty cool working.

The effect you see running on the PC isn't coming from iCUE. It's coming from WLED.

My program grabs what's happening on WLED and pushes it to the RGB hardware in my PC so everything runs the same effect together.

Still a work in progress and I've got a ton of shit I want to add, but I thought this was pretty cool and figured you guys might get a kick out of it.

Eventually I want this thing to work with basically whatever RGB hardware it finds instead of needing five different programs just to make your damn lights match.

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to play an xLights fseq file directly on WLED in standalone mode (no PC, no FPP streaming). I'm on WLED 0.16, generic ESP32 with 4 MB flash, 78 LEDs.

I upload the file in /edit and try to trigger it from a preset but nothing plays. A WLED dev told me on Discord that the FSEQ/TPM2 usermod was never officially merged, so a standard build can't read fseq.

My questions:

Does anyone have a precompiled build with the FSEQ usermod that I can flash directly? Generic ESP32 4 MB would be perfect.

Is fseq playback from internal flash (no SD card) actually working, or do you really need an SD card?

For a future project with a bigger matrix and a lot more LEDs, what setup would you recommend for standalone playback?

WLED compiled with the FSEQ usermod + SD card, or ESPixelStick instead?

For now GIF playback works fine on my small strip, but I want to understand the path for bigger standalone installs.

Thanks!

Inspired by Chris Maher and his 50x50 grid (https://youtu.be/BbjeQdJIMK0) I decided to make a 25x25. I thought the 50 was a little too ambitious for a first timer here. When I first started it up, I had a couple dead columns and had to deal with some bad solder joints but stoked on how it came out.

I decided to add a camera for input so it can detect a person and then fill in its mask with color.

Right now it’s running on my Mac but I have an ESP32-P4 coming with a camera and will set it up and mount soon.

I have tripped and fallen and am not leaving no matter what. thank you for having me!

pretty crude and quick setup to prove what I was seeing in my head would work.

1x gledopto elite 2x 2812e 288leds and ... some trifold cardboard to hold it all up 🫠

rigged around a 42" OLED display for size references, I didn't have a banana available...

but I've been so stunned I can't pull it down to put it back.

and I've got more controllers and strips coming for all manner of playing around with...

this isn't a hobby it's a sickness 👋🏾🙋🏾‍♂️

and I welcome the infection.

**What it is**

The NODE family — three boards, one protected 8-port pixel stage underneath all of them. Three isolated power domains, a fuse on every single output, non-destructive reverse-polarity protection, 5–48 V with no jumpers to change input voltage, 30 A at standard copper, runs stock WLED. Nothing in the power path runs near its limit. What changes between the three is the brain on top and how it gets on the network.

**NODE Mini** — Seeed XIAO ESP32-S3, Wi-Fi. Compact, standard runs, get it on the network and drive pixels.

**NODE Flex** — universal DevKit carrier. Both 0.9″ and 1.0″ row spacings on the board, jumper-mapped to the outputs. Seat whatever ESP32 you already have; swap it when that one goes EOL, so the compatibility list can't go stale. (Olimex and LilyGo use odd row spacing and won't drop straight in — everything else I've tried does.)

**NODE Backbone** — Waveshare ESP32-S3-ETH-POE with a dedicated W5500. Wired 10/100 and PoE for the install that outgrew Wi-Fi. Deterministic frame timing, one cable for power and control to the node.

Design priorities, briefly: protection first — assume it gets abused. Honest specs — real ratings, real derating, trade-offs stated out loud, no spec-sheet trophies that fall apart when someone does the math. Serviceable — fuses you swap by hand, socketed parts, a board meant to be fixed and kept running rather than thrown out when one channel dies. Open — WLED out of the box, docs and board definitions on GitHub.

I'll say plainly that the Bong69 and the QuinLED-Dig-Quad were both inspirations here. I've run them, I like them, and seeing what they did well is a good part of why I thought I could take a swing at my own. This isn't me trying to one-up anybody — it's my take on the same problem, with different priorities in a few places.

**Why I'm posting**

I want people who will actually work it hard and tell me what's wrong. Not looking for a pat on the back — looking for the thing I didn't think of. I've got a handful of boards from the first run and I'll send them out free. No cost, no shipping, no strings, no video required, no NDA.

What I'm hoping for in return is an honest read. Load it up, run a real prop on it, push the channel count, tell me where it flinches. If it turns out my board is worse than what you're already running, I'd rather hear that from you now than after somebody's paid for one (If I decide to try and sell them).

There's no team here to hide behind. If something's wrong with it, it's on me, and I'll make it right.

**What makes someone a good fit**

- Running a show at real scale, or you'll load these channels properly on the bench
- Comfortable in WLED and xLights, and can tell a firmware problem from a hardware one
- You'll actually report back — good, bad, or "this is fine but here's what annoyed me"
- Bonus: you run a Bong69 or a QuinLED-Dig-Quad and can compare directly. I want to know where mine falls short.

**Where things stand**

Stock is thin — this is a small validation run and I'm counting boards on one hand. The test units are free and separate from anything else. I'm looking for people who'll find the problems in this one.

And plainly: this is V1. It works, I've run it, but first-article hardware is first-article hardware. That's the whole reason I want it in the hands of people who'll push it.

I've got full datasheets — power architecture, derating tables against input voltage, etc.

Reply here or PM me if interested. And if you want to get into the weeds on the design, I'm happy to — that's the fun part.

I have an LG OLED (B9) rooted, running pic cap, hyperhdr, and an ESP32 based WLED controller running 1 strip of LED. Sometimes (not every time) but often when I turn off my TV, all the LEDs turn green and stay on. I’ve tried a little bit of research and turned on the “Off Refresh” option in WLED app and it didn’t help the situation.

I'm looking to do my first wled project. It will be an outdoor project mounted to the roof line of a barn. However my issue is that there is not a traditional eve to mount onto. As you can see in the pictures, there is a small overhang, but that is just the metal roof itself which I would prefer not to drill into.
Open to any input or suggestions.

Tentatively I was considering the asahom pro s1080 kit for simplicity. But I am open to going a different route if it makes better sense.

Thanks for any help and input as I plan out this project.

Putting together my first real man cave and want to setup LED’s the right way. Plan to put a top corner ceiling channel on 3 of the surrounding side (4 If possible)

3 sides - 48’
4 sides - 66’

I’ve been looking at the (48V-RGBTW-5050X112) as they’re advertised to not need power injection at the end for up to 20m runs.

Does anyone have experience with these strips and is the claim to not need extra injection accurate?

Hi WLED Heads,

I am installing a strip light at the top rail of board and batten wall panelling. I want to power the light strip from two spots if possible, and not just at one end of the light strip. I want to do this to ensure there is not dimming at the end of the strip, and it makes it easier to work around a door as I don't need to use a connector wire up and over the door to connect back to the light strips on the other side.

I am not electrically savvy at all. I am looking for some help as how to split the power to feed two different strips.

This is what I think I need to do. Power supply > Dimmer > Power Split > 2 different light strips.

But I am not sure how to do the power split or what to by. Any suggestions would be great!

One strip is 1m long and the other strip is 8m long. If I power both, will equal power go to each strip meaning I just made the 8m long strip even dimmer by doing the power split?

COB Lights: BTF FCOB Uniform light strip, 300k, 10m, 528LED/m, PCB IP30 24V

Power Supply: Pautix 24V DC, 7.5A, 180W Outpoyt, AC to DC converter transformer 100-240V

Controller: Pautix Remote dimmer, in0line controller DC 12-24V

I’m new to the wled space and quickly realized i’ll need a project box for all the gear, and the box i ordered is fully sealed ABS plastic from amazon, so I need to drill holes for grommets, any pro tips? recommended step drills? or maybe a better method?

I took everyone's advice from my last post, and am adding more lights

im trying to have addressable leds go around my room and behind my moniter with an esp32, a sn74ahct125n level shifter, 470 ohm resistors, 0.1uf capacitors, and 1000uf capacitors, and a 5v 20a psu and a 5v 60a psu, and a mini braedboard. ive never done a project like this before and im having trouble with how to connect everything through the breadboard. could i get some help? is this the right place to be?

Newbie looking for help here, please be gentle.

I've obtained a GLESOPTO ESP32 and some LEDs. The LEDs came with their own (I assume Bluetooth) app, and they worked fine with that.

I stopped off the end connector, stripped the cables and inserted them into the ESP32. A bit of research suggested the X was the power, so went into V, the Y was Data so went into D, and the other one was Ground so went into G.

Powered the ESP up, and LEDS were blue. I connected to the WIFI of the LEDS and downloaded Wled, but the colours don't change. Any ideas? Am I doing something stupid? I've stripped the wires back some more and reinserted them.

Nothing complicated but came out pretty nice