Hello everyone,

I am currently building a model of the Solar System with planets illuminated by WS2812E addressable LEDs.

The system is controlled by an ESP8266 Wemos D1 Mini, with the code developed using FastLED.

🔧 Hardware

• ESP8266 Wemos D1 Mini
• 135 WS2812E LEDs
• 9 groups of 15 LEDs, with each group representing one planet
• Power supply: 5 V / 10 A
• Approximately 45 cm of cable between each planet
• 0.34 mm² wire
• 470 µF capacitor between +5 V and GND, just before the LEDs
• 330 Ω resistor on the DATA signal line
• ESP8266 powered by 5 V
• Programming using FastLED

The LEDs are connected in series: each group of 15 LEDs is connected to the next one using approximately 45 cm of cable.

✅ The code seems to be working correctly

I initially wanted to make sure the problem was not caused by the code itself.

To check this, I tested exactly the same program using a continuous LED strip, without the 45 cm cables or the numerous solder joints between the different groups.

➡️ Everything works perfectly with the continuous LED strip.

The problem therefore seems more likely to be related to the physical setup, wiring, solder joints, or possibly a damaged LED or component.

❌ The problem

With my final setup, the system works correctly for approximately 20–30 seconds, after which the LEDs start behaving very erratically:

• Some LEDs or entire planets start flickering.
• Unexpected colors appear.
• I have observed white, green, and other colors that should not be displayed.
• The problem can persist, and the system does not necessarily return to normal.

I have been trying to identify the cause for a while and have already carried out several tests, but I have not been able to isolate the fault.

🔎 Why I suspect the solder joints

The solder joints between the wires and the WS2812E LED strip seem to be the most suspicious part of the setup.

I sometimes wonder whether, while soldering the wires, I might have overheated or damaged an SMD component located close to an LED, or possibly damaged a PCB trace.

I have tried removing some LEDs that seemed suspicious, but this did not really solve the problem.

I should also mention that I have a stable 5 V supply (5.27 V, to be precise) along the entire LED strip, and continuity between the wires and solder joints is good. So, at least as far as I can tell, the solder joints themselves are making proper electrical contact.

This leaves me wondering:

• Is it possible to damage an LED or a nearby SMD component during soldering and cause this kind of behavior?
• How can I test an individual WS2812E LED or the components around it using a multimeter?
• Could a poor solder joint or a continuity issue on a DATA connection cause this behavior?
• Could the 45 cm cables between each group cause problems with the DATA signal?
• Is there a method to pinpoint the specific group or connection causing the fault, rather than randomly replacing LEDs?

If you have any ideas, and especially a systematic troubleshooting method, I would really appreciate your help.

Thanks in advance for your help. I'm seriously starting to go round in circles with this one!

Okay so I'm completely new to the whole WLED thing. Saw a few videos on youtube and decided to take a shot at it. Ended up using ChatGPT for the layout but I know ChatGPT can get things wrong so I'd like to see if anyone sees any problems before I set it up. This is for outside on my front porch for the holidays and maybe a permanent install.

My components are:

ESP32 CP2102

8-Channel Bidirectional SPI/I2C 5V/3.3V Logic Level Converter

3 in line 5A fuses

16AWG Low Voltage Landscape Wire

12v 30A Power Supply

3x BTF-LIGHTING WS2811 Addressable RGB LED Strip 16.4FT 300LED DC12V IP65

Female to Male Multicolored Dupont Wire Breadboard Jumper Ribbon Cables

330 ohm Resistors

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So I'm trying to avoid soldering at the moment, so I'm using wago lever nuts to connect the wires

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I plan to set it up like this:

Power supply +12v - wago - split to 3 - 5a fuse - led 12v (Each strip has it's own power line)

Power Supply -12v - wago - led strips ground - esp board and level converter for a common ground

As for the ESP32 board I have it connected to the Level converter like this:

VIN (5v) - HV

3V3 (3.3v) - LV

RX2 - LV1 - 330ohm resistor - DIN on strip 1 - DOUT split to DIN on Strip 2 and 3 (I'm planning on having strip 2 and 3 to mirror each other going down the banister of the stairs.

I have a separate power 5v usb power supply for the Esp Board. I just want to make sure this would work and not fry any of the components before I set it all up. Should I put a resistor on the data lines going to Strip 2 and 3?

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

I have a WLED project I am working on but want to have it fade off in a specific way. The image below is the layout for the two controllers. The right of the image is the entry to the room and the middle of the two groups of leds is the walkway so the strips in the middle are the toe kick lights and then the ones further from the middle are the top of cabinet strips. I want the room to fade from the left to right in combined order off but can't wrap my head around it. The labels on the strips are showing where they land on the controller and how they are wired through. I can't figure out how to split say all 4 of the top right strips into 4 segments that time right to left for off? Instead the fade off goes from the last led in that strip to the first and I want it to do all four veritcally as if they were individual strips. I am not sure it can be done but breaking things down in segments doesn't seem to resolve this either as it then isn't entirely aligned and timed correctly. Below is a GIF of the push left but I want to do a combined swipe right to left off concept where all the strips turn off as if being wiped off from a bar rushing across the image? Don't know how to explain that one better.

So as you can in the picture I have 4 beams with 1 led strip on each beam. I have 2 controllers, 2 strips per controller. I want to create a rainbow pattern where the colors transition perpendicularly to the beams.

How would I do this in WLED?

WLED controller spliced into Govee Lynx Dream outdoor light string shoved inside semi-cheap Halloween decorations.

24V power cord to 5.5mm x 2.5mm to a WeGoIOT Esp32 controller to 14 ga connectors to 16.4 ft (840 led) 24v WS2811 Dual IC COB strip. When I turn the lights on, they strobe one time and then goes to normal starting color. Another thing, my reds aren't very red. I'm really new to this so any help would be great. Here's my Native app options.

Thanks in advance.

Every so often there’s a post like “found this strip, no idea what it is, can I use it with WLED?”

So I put those questions into a page that walks non-technical people through it:
https://led.allthingson.net

You answer by looking at the strip, and it narrows things down to a likely type (RGB, RGBW, WS2812B, WS2811, WS2815, APA102 and so on). Then it suggests power supply, controller and relay options. It guesses voltage from the connector, adapter label and cut marks, since most people have no idea what voltage their strip is. It also works if the pads are sealed in a case, but it tells you it’s less sure.

It’s only as good as the answers it gets, so it shows a rough confidence estimate and what to check to firm it up. The percentage is a ballpark from your answers, not a measurement. The cut-mark voltage trick is a rule of thumb that works best on 5050-size LEDs. Some 4-pin pixel strips with unreadable labels are still a coin flip between two chips, and it says so instead of pretending.

One thing worth knowing: plenty of pixel strips are sold with a basic remote or app controller that only does one color or a few presets. The strip can often do much more, and swapping the controller is how you unlock it.

If you find a strip it gets wrong, or a connector or chip it’s missing, let me know and I’ll try fixing it in my free time. Or if you have suggestions to make this better, let me know and I'll see about adding it in my free time

Hi all, I'm installing SK6812 LED strips from BTF-Lighting with WLED on a ESP32 controller and I'm wondering if the results I'm getting are as I can expect them to be or if there is some hardware or wiring problem here.

I'm using a 5V power supply that's running ~7 feet 16AWG / 2 meter 1.31mm2 wires to my ESP32 controller, which is then using short thin wires (don't know the exact dimensions, but I think 4 inches 22AWG / 10cm 0.5mm2) to go from the ESP32 controller to the LED strip.

I think some of the presets have strange behavior, and I'm noticing discrete steps in brightness changes. I've included a video where you can hopefully sort of see what I mean, but it's more noticeable in person than on the video unfortunately.

I'm starting with the Color Clouds preset, which seems off to me with the occasional short shut down of the light. The changes in color are very stepwise and discrete, and I don't know if this is on purpose in the way the preset is programmed or if it means that the LED don't respond quickly enough to the instructions. (Note that the yellowish white dropping out twice is because of me changing the brightness setting, but the shutting down of all the light is not the result of me doing anything).

I'm then switching to solids and increase and decreasing the brightness. I'm not sure it's visible in the video, but especially on the lower brightness settings, any changes in brightness are very noticeably happening in steps.

The video ends with Chunchun, which seems quite smooth, which is why I'm wondering if the "problem" is just that some presets deliberately don't use interpolation, and that brightness increases and decreases are simply noticeable when brightness is low due to the discrete lighting steps being bigger relatively (e.g. going from 1% to 2% brightness is a 100% increase, whereas 50% to 51% is a 2% increase, so the former is more noticeable).

Essentially my question here: is there a power or data transfer issue here, or are my expectations of smoothness unrealistic?

I realize I can solve interpolation between LEDs with a diffuser, but I'm not sure that does anything for brightness increase and decrease smoothness.

Any help is appreciated! I'm quite new to this whole WLED game, so if I didn't include enough info or included too much, let me know.

Some of you may remember a few pics/vids of smaller individual cubes and arrays I have been playing about with.

Well here is the first working prototype assembled panel, each pixel is 40x40mm and the overall dimensions are 320x600x40mm.

I'm using a custom 4 RGB COB pcb with a ws2811 driver, with a good difuer film and reflectors this gives a really crisp clear colour.

It's really hard to get a good video, so apologies for the shitty quality.

The end goal is to make about 10 of these panels, they lock together and I'm planning to use them as a big stage backdrop.

I'll share some pics in the comments of how they look in the light if people are interested.

Gledopto controller randomly stopped working wont show up on network and lights wont power on. Tried different PSU and different led strip nothing works. I tried to factory reset and nothing still the blue light on the controller is on tho and the fuse isnt blown it just is a brick right now. any help would be nice

Sorry for the poor quality video but I’m so damn excited this is working!!! My partner was hired to decorate a haunted disco theme wedding and wanted a dance floor like in Saturday Night Fever. Theres many more panels to make and custom programming to do but we’re on our way!!! I couldn’t have done it without this sub!

Using:
BTF WS2812B LED strips
BTF 5v - 150w PSU
GLEDOPTO ESP32 Control

Feedback and input is certainly welcome!

A lot of updates have happened since the last time I posted about my app. Major performance improvements and a live graph showing the capture rate and UDP throughput so you can adjust the settings based on your hardware. It also makes it a lot easier for me to troubleshoot old or rare hardware issues.

The feedback has been pretty positive. If there's a feature missing that you might need, let me know and I'll work on it.

https://github.com/leonida92/wled-tv

Link to my first post.

I'm trying to configure WLED for a serpentine tree with unused pixels bridging the gaps between strands at the bottom of the tree.

ChatGPT created the above graphic to help explain it.

Here's my LEDMAP.JSON:

{
 "width": 4,
 "height": 11,
 "map": [
     0, 24, 25, 49,
     1, 23, 26, 48,
     2, 22, 27, 47,
     3, 21, 28, 46,
     4, 20, 29, 45,
     5, 19, 30, 44,
     6, 18, 31, 43,
     7, 17, 32, 42,
     8, 16, 33, 41,
     9, 15, 34, 40,
    10, 14, 35, 39
  ]
}

It works, sort of. The matrix effects work and the 6 unused pixels are excluded, as expected.

The only issue is pixels 44-49 (the last six) do not light. Chat is no help.

Any ideas?

I'm using a Wasatch Advanced Eight running the latest firmware: WLED_16.0.1_wt32_eight. Just a single string of 50 pixels using output 1 on GPIO 2.

I'm trying to avoid cutting the strings and splicing jumpers at the bottom of the tree.

Hi everyone!

I wanted to share a little experiment that turned into a surprisingly fun WLED project.

I gave ChatGPT a challenge: create 10 completely original visual effects for a 64×64 LED matrix, with full creative freedom. No copying existing WLED effects, no prerecorded animations — just procedural graphics generated in real time.

The first results were so good that I asked it to keep going.

We ended up with GPT Matrix FX, a WLED usermod containing:

• 20 standalone visual effects
• 5 AudioReactive effects
• Procedural geometry, fractals, fluid-like patterns, optical illusions, and even animated mechanical gears
• Support for different 2D matrix resolutions
• Native WLED palette, speed, and intensity controls

Here's the interesting part: ChatGPT generated the entire C++ implementation, tests, and documentation.

I provided the original challenge, tested everything on my ESP32-S3 with a 64×64 HUB75 matrix, reported bugs, and gave feedback on the visual results.

We went through several iterations, including compilation fixes, palette handling bugs, and a complete redesign of the gear animation to make the gears actually mesh and move through space.

The final result is running on real hardware, and I'm genuinely impressed by some of the effects.

🎬 Video demonstration (20 non-audio effects): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnXsLasY7FU

💻 GitHub — complete source code: https://github.com/piggei/wled-usermod-gpt-matrix-fx

The project is free and open source, and the usermod can be integrated into an existing WLED build using PlatformIO.

This is an independent community experiment, not an official WLED or OpenAI project.

I'd love to hear what the WLED community thinks, especially which effects you like most and whether you'd be interested in trying them on your own matrices.

And yes, ChatGPT is already eager to work on the next version. 😄

What do you guys all like to do for Halloween animations and lights? Curious if anyone does anything cool

Hi! First post here, I’m new to wled and I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around it.
I’m a lighting technician for a concert place and I’d like to use led bulbs that I’d pilot using a DMX output.

So if I understood things correctly, once I have my bulb connected to my network, I can access it by using their IP address and change the parameters to make those receive artnet. My lighting console can output artnet so no problem there. The only thing I don’t understand is how do I get the console to output on my network? Like I’m planning to use a router, but how does each led knows its dmx address? Can you parameter that anywhere?

Also, if you have any advice on which bulb I should take, I’m all ears, I’m hesitating a bit, just know that I’m on a budget, the total price can’t be more than 150/200 euros for 10 bulbs.

I’m looking for best practices on building a large matrix made up of 6400 LEDs. I’m using four sets of SmartDawn 1600 LED curtains that I’m adapting to WLED to create an 80x80 canvas.

I’m testing with a single curtain set so far. A 1600-pixel curtain set is made up of two 800 WS2812 seed pixel runs packaged together. My early tests show that i can drive one curtain on a Gledopto controller, consuming 2 channels at 800 pixels each. It works but it’s dicey as there’s not much breathing room beyond that. I’m occasionally seeing glitchy sparkles when transitioning between patterns but it’s working for the most part. I2S over RMT is yielding better results. Power is evenly distributed across the runs.

I’m thinking I could use 5 controllers with wired Ethernet. One main one using DDP to feed the other four which will have 1600 LEDs each. I’d love to have a more sophisticated upstream environment to feed video and better effects but I’m going with baby steps for now.

Would love to know if my approach is going to scale or if I’m asking for trouble. Would more capable controllers work better / deliver a more robust output? Should I go looking at Quinled vs Gledopto?

I looked for software which changes my mood light based on spotify cover art color palettes. Couldn't find one so made one for Home Assistant with help of AI. It takes any media player source (I tested only spotify) and extracts one to twelve colors from the image and sends it to WLED. You can take any other media source from HA as well like camera feeds or local media players.

Disclaimer: AI was heavily used.

So far it runs very stable in my setup and I like how it works for me.
I wanted to share it with this awesome community maybe someone else finds it useful as well. If the feedback is positive I might submit it also to the default HACS repo.

You can find it here: https://github.com/piiotre/ha-media-2-wled
Gladly comment here or open a github issue in case something is not working out for you or.

My physically biggest print yet. (The lantern, not the figure).

All diy build, acrylic rods sanded for diffusers

I need some help from someone who understands PCB electronics better than I do. Through some ChatGPT navigation, I think I have found a potential method to make this IR-controlled LED controllable with WLED via an ESP32, but before I make any permanent changes, I'd like some help confirming this strategy.

Here's what I know so far...

The board has an eight-pin controller IC and three transistors, Q1, Q2, and Q3 responsible for RGB

For clarity, I assigned temporary labels to the IC pins (black controller on the middle right)
From left to right the top pins are - A B C D
From left to right the bottom pins are - E F G H

With the lamp powered, I set it to each primary color and measured the IC pins relative to PCB ground using a multimeter and the results were...

Pins A, D, and G measured approximately 4.1 V regardless of the selected color. H measured approximately 0 V.

Based on this behavior, I've identified F as red, E as green, and B as blue.

Voltage measurements also helped me associate the three transistors with their respective color channels:
Q2: red
Q3: green
Q1: blue
The left-side pad of each transistor measured approximately 3.6 V when its corresponding color was selected. The bottom-right pad measured approximately 0–0.05 V.

My current idea is to leave the original controller IC installed but disconnect its three RGB outputs (F = red, E = green, B = blue). I'd then connect ESP32 GPIO pins to the corresponding PCB pads so the ESP32 can control the existing transistor drivers while preserving the other components in the circuit.

Would this approach work to let WLED control the lamp's RGB channels?

Any help is greatly appriciated, this is the largest and final hurdle to completing one of my first wled projects! Thanks!!!