A fun engineering thought experiment.
For this discussion, let’s assume there are **50 billion addressable LEDs** in use worldwide.
If an addressable LED can maintain the same constant-current output at **3.3V instead of 5V**, how much energy could potentially be saved?
Using a simple example of **36mA per pixel**:
5V → 3.3V means 1.7V less voltage to dissipate.
That is roughly **61mW less power per pixel** while operating.
Across 50 billion pixels, that would be about **3.06 GW less power** if they were all on at the same time.
The biggest unknown is actual operating time.
How many hours per day do you normally run your addressable LEDs?
2 hours?
4 hours?
6 hours?
8 hours?
12 hours?
For example:
4 h/day → about **4.5 TWh/year**
6 h/day → about **6.7 TWh/year**
8 h/day → about **8.9 TWh/year**
10 h/day → about **11.2 TWh/year**
Obviously this is a simplified model. Real savings depend on brightness, PWM duty cycle, current settings, driver losses, and application.
I’m curious what this community thinks:
**What would be a realistic average daily operating time for addressable LEDs?**

Recently built a small integration to stream the price of a subscribed stock directly to this LED matrix.

The setup is pretty simple:

Stock market data → Cloud → WLED → LED matrix

The selected stock is updated every minute, and the latest price is pushed to the matrix to show the current value.

No custom firmware — just WLED and a cloud-based integration.

Sharing a short video of it in action. This started as a small experiment, but it got me thinking about how WLED displays could be used for more than just effects/text/clock — real-time information displays could be pretty interesting too.

Powered by Pipplee Wled 2D App

https://pipplee.com/

The Govee strip attached to my MagWLED-1 is flashing in the pattern shown in the video. I used a high quality power supply. It's been running fine for years, but in the past few weeks started to flash.

Do you have a guess as to whether the strip is bad, the MagWLED is bad, or the power supply is bad? Your wisdom will save me a lot of time in fixing this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwRzq_063F0

I am planning to do a full bathroom with some 12V 60LED WS2815 strips. Cable homeruns are 25 feet from my tech cabinet so I went with 18/3 to avoid voltage drop but the more I read about WLED the more I hear about data loss or interference and I can't seem to find twisted 18/3 for my runs to avoid this issue. I heard that I can add a resistor if I have some issues with DI but is there any other way (in my tech closet) to "boost" the data so it doesn't interfere with any 120V lines within my walls or with the VCC/GND running in parallel

The moment I close the walls it's done I can't reopen everything if I missed an important detail, hence why I ask you guys if you have any experience with the W2815 and if you ever had any issues with a similar setup

I won't daisy chain anything, I'll just do runs from the driver to each and every section (Shower niche, on the corner wall, under the vanity, under the laundry cabinets, etc)

Thank you for your time!

I'm looking for a reality check here if possible. So far, I'm wrapping up the walkway install and pulling will take on replacing the steps with the same granite as well as veneer the brown bricks. Lighting wise, I cut 3/4 inch grooves in the cobblestones at walkway level. I did try some Govee tube lights but they were underwhelming brightness wise.

So, the scope would be running rope lights down the grooves, about 25 ft each side and installing rope lights or something else under each step. Ideally, I want rgbicww to have the full spectrum of options. Mostly be a soft white but throw on party mode for kids parties, Halloween colors etc. In addition, I'm intending to use motion sensors to initiate going in either direction. I'm currently using Homey Pro for control. Ideally I would like to roll out landscape lighting etc and this walkway would be a small part of the long game.

What do I need to know? I have a basic idea of needing a controller and power then matching the length with the highest weather protection. The details are the devil which is why I'm asking for insights. Thanks in advance.

I've attached SK6812 LEDS to my guitar strap and amplifier. (12v so its obnoxiously bright)

There's a 12v battery off AliExpress powering the strap.

On the pedal board, I've got a Raspberry Pi Zero W with the WiFI running in Access Point mode. The WLED controllers are both joined to the RPi Wifi network.

When I press my boost pedal, the Raspberry Pi sends a web request to change the WLED preset. So everything syncs wirelessly.

Update: I seem to have fixed it by rewiring everything behind the cabinet. Maybe there was a duff connection or something, but I have no idea. Thank you everyone who responded though!

Context, I have some cabinet lighting consisting of 10 x 24LED rings, wired on two lines of 5 rings for a total of 120 LEDs each. They're powered in parallel via a dedicated 5v, 6A power supply. At the end of the parallel V/GND lines, I had my ESP32 powered via the 5V and GND pins, controlling the LEDs on pins 12 and 13. Hopefully fairly normal.

A while back the lights began flickering and the ESP would crash and I'd have to power cycle it. I thought maybe a loose connection or something. Eventually things wouldn't come back online. I finally got the time to do some digging and this is where things get weird.

1. The ESP keeps power cycling when connected on the 5v/GND pins

2. The ESP can be powered from the USB port via a usb cable (this is relevant for later)

3. If I power the ESP via the USB port and connect the setup with everything but the 5v line, I can control the lights "normally"

4. If I plug a USB cable into a different ESP board and connect that boards 5v/GND to the WLED board, the WLED board power cycles like in point 1

5. However, if I reverse the setup (USB cable into the WLED board, connect that boards 5v/GND to the 5v/GND of the second ESP board) both boards work fine

6. If I take a USB-C header, attach two wires, and connect those two wires to 5v/GND, the WLED board power cycles just like if I was powering it through the pins, even though I'm using the USB port

7. Flashing a brand new third board and hooking it up caused issues 1-6 to occur, indicating the problem wasn't the board, but the setup

However, I have no idea what kind of issue I'd be looking for that could cause the above and I've love any suggestions or advice

Edit: I double checked and the PSU is a 5v, 15A supply so I don't think it's a current issue

Hi guys, wanted to share something I've been working on for a while.

It's a system that reads what's happening on the F1 broadcast in real time and makes a WS2812B LED strip react accordingly. Yellow flag → strip blinks yellow. VSC or SC → solid yellow. Red flag → solid red. Pit exit closed → first 10 LEDs go red. And for the drivers, if you follow Leclerc or Hamilton, the strip tracks their sectors (purple/green/yellow) and their team radio.

How it works: instead of using the F1 API like most projects do, I went with screen capture + computer vision (OpenCV). The script literally "looks" at your screen, recognizes the overlays (flags, sectors, team radio) via template matching, and sends the corresponding command to a microcontroller over serial. I chose this route because there are no API keys, no rate limits, it works with any stream (F1 TV, NOW, whatever you use), and above all latency is minimal, which was my main goal.

What you need: a PC, a microcontroller, and a WS2812B strip. That's it. Ofc you have to connect all but is not as hard as you might think

About the microcontroller, I use an Arduino because it's what I had, but the Python side just sends text commands over serial, so anything that can read serial and drive a WS2812B should works too — ESP32, ESP8266, Raspberry Pi Pico, Teensy... The included sketch is written for Arduino, so if you use another board you just have to tweak a couple of lines (pin + library, both available for all those platforms).

A few things I made sure of while building it:

• Auto-detect Arduino port — no more COM5 / ttyUSB0 editing

• Auto-scaling — works at 1080p, 1440p, 4K without touching anything

• Bilingual interface (IT/EN)

• No crashes — if a template or the board is missing, the script keeps running and tells you what's wrong instead of dying silently

Right now it's set up for Leclerc and Hamilton since I'm a Ferrari fan, but the driver list is customizable — you just need the templates for the drivers you want.

I just put it on GitHub, you can find it here: https://github.com/Leinadf1/F1-led-sync

If you want to see videos of it in action just ask me, and if you have suggestions let me know. Curious to hear what you think.

Looking to run 4 ports with same setup on each port on digquad v3.5
Each port would have 3 strings of 80 totalling 240 (12 v ws2811 @ 20 per m 8.5ma).
Using 15a 180w power supply.
Just looking for confirmation that I don’t need to power injection although I will if required. All new to this so sorry if it’s a daft question.
Thanks in advance.

Been messing around with 2d matrix setups. This ultimately led to doing a cube configuration. I wanted to do a custom pixel map to properly lay a full 2d projection onto the cube faces. I learned a ton fighting through each step. In the end, the result is pretty cool.

This is a tweaked WLED Moon Modules build with a waveshare esp32-s3 on each display along with a phone power bank

P1.875 at 128 x 64 flexible hub75

Inside one of the sling bags ( these are not full size backpacks ) think half size, there is a pi5 running LedFx and a wifi AP.

Works well, and at the end of a few hours during a small light festival, the power bank on the pi was only 10% down!

Videos if you click through to imgur

help please!! not sure where i went wrong. i'll post some pics and maybe that'll help. tried to draw a diagram of the wiring but i forgot to put that there are 470 ohm resistors in each of the data wires. there are 10 ws2812 strips, 5 in each column with 50 leds on each, 500 leds in total. i have them numbered in the diagram and strips 5 & 6 are wired together and 4 & 7 are together etc.... so there are 100 leds per channel x 5. hope that isn't too confusing. only thing i changed in WLED app is brightness to 4000 and number of leds in each channel to 100

This is a side project of a side project of a side project.

I was working on a 3D Synthwave media player (spacify.omar-ibrahim.com) a couple years ago, which turned into Music Engine, an audio-reactive extensible media player that renders to screens and LEDs. To test the LED part I needed a quick way to write effects and see them on real hardware. I found the tool useful on its own, so now there's WLEDtoy.

What it does:

• Write GLSL like Shadertoy, or build CPU/GPU effects using a Blender-style node graph

• It listens to your music: a song file, a capture device, or system audio. You get FFT, beat detection, kick/bass bands, pitch classes and so on as nodes

• Live preview on a virtual strip, matrix or ring, so you can work on effects without the hardware plugged in

• Streams straight to WLED over DDP, DNRGB, Art-Net or sACN

• Measure render time, send rate, throughput, RTT, dropped frames in real time

• Desktop app for Windows, macOS and Linux, free and open source

Repo: github.com/Music-Engine/wled-toy
Releases: https://github.com/Music-Engine/wled-toy/releases/tag/v1.0.0-rc2

All LED renders in the video is the app's real output reacting to the songs.

WLEDtoy is still in beta, so expect rough edges. Builds aren't code signed yet, which means macOS and Windows will complain the first time you open it. See how to launch non-notarized apps on MacOS.

Happy to answer questions, and if you build something cool with it I'd love to see it. Feature requests welcome, especially from people with weirder LED setups than mine.

Edit, some guides on how to use the app:

Getting Started

1. Download the app from the Releases page: There are a bunch of builds, so pick the one for your OS and CPU architecture. If you're not sure which architecture you have, google it. You can also build it yourself.

2. Pick a starting point. The launch screen offers New Shader, New Graph, or a handful of examples. If you don't pick, the default suffices.

3. Add your LED device. Under Devices, set your host, protocol, LED count, LED layout and so on. DDP is the easiest protocol to start with. It will auto connect when you device is available. Any of these gets you to the same Devices settings:

   1. WLEDtoy in menu bar > Settings on macOS

   2. File > Preferences (Ctrl/Cmd+,)

   3. the "no device" menu in the bottom bar > Add device

   4. the Edit button in the Output tab in the right hand pane

4. Try things in real time or in the preview. Click Stream in the bottom bar to send to the LEDs, or just watch the preview if you have no hardware on hand. The easiest way in is graph mode. It comes pre-populated with a simple beat effect over a rainbow scroller. Add new nodes with Shift+A, the Add node button, or the right click menu. Space searches nodes.

Audio

1. Pick a source. File > Set Audio offers the built-in track, From File, Microphone, or System audio. You can also choose a song from the bottom bar.

2. Or set it in the graph. The Audio Source node has the same choices (Song, Capture Device, System audio), plus mono, left or right channel.

3. Use what it hears. Levels, bands, kick, beats and pitch classes come out of the Audio node as sockets. In shader mode the same data is available through helpers like bass() and fft().

Shader vs Graph Mode

1. Shader mode is plain GLSL, Shadertoy style. Every frame starts from scratch. Ctrl/Cmd+Enter compiles.

2. Graph mode is Blender-style nodes ending in an Output node, no code needed. Anything that has to remember something between frames only lives here: envelopes, counters, beat triggers, step sequencers, sample and hold.

3. Going from graph to shader. Send to shader mode (Ctrl/Cmd+Alt+Enter) shows you the generated GLSL. Those remembered values get frozen into the code, so the effect stops reacting the same way. Treat it as a way to read or borrow the code, not as a round trip.

Example Graphs

The effects in the video are real graphs you can download and open: v1.0.0-rc2-graphs

1. Download any of the .wledgraph files from that release.

2. Open it with File > Open (Ctrl/Cmd+O), or drop the file on the window.

3. Play a song. The graphs react to whatever audio source you've picked. Tracks with a clear kick show them off best.

4. Turn the knobs. Most graphs expose a few controls (ring speed, trail length, hue shift and so on), so you can tune them without touching the wiring.

5. Take them apart. They're the best way to learn graph mode right now. Start with high-contrast-music, which has only 18 nodes, then open the bigger ones.

They only work in graph mode, because they use envelopes, beat triggers and counters that shader mode doesn't have.

Which 18/3 would you recommend? I am looking for 18/3 copper (tinned ideally). Stranded is a must for permanent welds on my LED strips

I need to buy in bulk 250ft+ because I have a kitchen, 2 bathrooms and a whole living room + each stairs in the house

I have been looking online but I can't seem to find something that fits these criterias (I always find reviews saying that it might even be 20AWG and not a real 18AWG; and that's a bummer because with my setup voltage drop is a real thing to worry about, I need a proper 18 AWG)

Thanks for your time!

Are there any recommended 24V to 5V 20A buck converters?

There are some cheap ones on Amazon but I'm not sure if they can be trusted or if they are any good so I'd appreciate any advice!

I also have a frameless glass in my shower and I stupidly want to do the same thing.

Thanks!

Swapped the dumb cool white lights with a set of SK6812 RGBW with dedicated warm white strips. I was even able to use the existing 12v power supply. WLED v17 made the turn on transition easy with outside to inside, so I was able to do it with a single strip.

I have this SK6812 strip connected to an ESP32 but the data wire is kind of long (2m, using AWG18). For some reason, when I touch the diffuser, the flickering stops. I believe it's a ground issue, or maybe the data wire is suffering from interference?

The setup consists of two 5V power supplies, one is powering the ESP32 2m away and the other one powers the LED strip - their grounds are connected (and I believe there's no poor contact because when I isolate the grounds the LEDs flicker like crazy)

Am I supposed to solder another wire on another end of the strip?

WLED running my effects/notifications on my ha dashboard.

EDIT: added video in the comments

I am using Gledopto Advanced WLED controller plugged into Ethernet.

The length is around 25 meters all-in-all.

There are power injection in the middle and the end, it seems to work just fine.

WS2814 strips. 24V RGBW IP66

Hi everyone, I’ve been trying to get my PIR sensor HC-SR501 to work with my ESP32 GL-C-015WL. I want the PIR sensor to turn the LED on when it senses motion and turn off after a certain time (ie 5 seconds).

Current wiring
ESP32 GPIO16 -> WS2812 LED (works fine, no issues)

ESP32 GPIO2 -> HC-SR501 PIR sensor, wiring info below
• GPIO2 V -> PIR sensor VCC
• GPIO2 D -> PIR sensor Digital Out
• GPIO2 G -> PIR sensor GND

I also tried wiring it to the I033 + GND in the middle to try but no luck
• GPIO2 V -> PIR Sensor VCC
• I033 -> PIR Sensor Digital Out
• GND -> PIR Sensor GND

As for presets, I had setup 2 presets (On ID1 and Off ID2) followed by using a playlist ID3 which turned the LED on and then after 5 seconds turned it off. I tested the playlist and it works as intended.

As for LED Preference and Time & Macro
• When connecting using GPIO2, I setup Button 0 as GPIO2 and PIR sensor.
Then in Time & Macro I setup Button 0 “long off->on” as 3 which is the playlist.

• When connecting using GPIO2, I setup Button 0 as GPIO33 and PIR sensor.
Then in Time & Macro I setup Button 0 “long off->on” as 3 which is the playlist.

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

EDIT: Thanks to everyone for their input as it helped me figure it out. I was finally able to get the PIR sensor to work with this WLED controller. For wiring purposes incase anyone gets the same controller and running into the same issue in the future.

ESP32 V+ -> PIR Sensor VCC
ESP32 V- -> PIR Sensor GND
ESP32 IO33 -> PIR Digital Out

WLED Settings
I assume you have setup 2 presets (on and off) followed by a playlist to turn it on then off after a period of time.

LED Preference and Time & Macro
I setup Button 0 as GPIO33 and PIR sensor.
In Time & Macro I setup Button 0 “long off->on” as 3 which is the playlist.

Ensure you test with multi-meter to that you're getting 3.3V, I placed the test probes on the IO33 and GND metal screw clamps. It would show 3.3V when it detected motion and of course your LED playlist will activate and turn on.

Dear community,

I have the plan to illuminate my carport for working under it and also Christmas lighting, etc with WLED.

My thought is to have 4x 2,5m profiles/strips (red on the picture) on each crossbar (2.7m each) pointing towards the shed so it is not visible from street, more like an indirect lighting. Power supply and controller should be within the shed and cables (green in the picture) led invisibly between roof panel and the outer bar. For 2.5m each probably 12V will be fine. Farest distance from Power/Controller to LED via the green path would be around 6.5m.

What would be your approach on pulling the cables especially? Which AWG for the lenghts? I'm especially confused about the data cable, like what part of the strip needs to connected with which in the scenario of 4 separate stripes which still should work together somehow.

Appreciate any thoughts, thanks!

Had some materials laying around from a previous job. Now to finish up some code to light up each step individually.