A Beginner's Guide to DIY LED Projects

[@raven_fpv]

VERY thorough and the perfect video for beginners and experts alike! Thank you very much for taking the time out of your life to do this video! 2 Thumbs up buddy!

[@ResinChemTech]

Thanks! I greatly appreciate the kind words. While many of the topics are covered in various parts of other videos, I wanted to try to make a single place for a beginner to get answers regarding starting out with LEDs. As I mentioned towards the end of the video, my goal is really to try to help others and encourage them to give DIY projects a shot. It's my way of giving back for those that helped me when I first started. Thanks for watching... and taking time to post an appreciated comment. It's these types of comments that encourage me to keep making videos!

[@AlysonAsami]

Thank you so much for this video! I don’t know why it’s been so hard to find this info online but it was really helpful. I knew I had huge gaps in my understanding while watching other tutorials but had no idea where to look

[@ResinChemTech]

You are very welcome! I realized that I was getting a lot of questions in my various LED videos that I had answered in a different video. But I didn't have a single video where I tried to address some of the most common questions that folks were asking. So I decided it might be a good idea to create a single video where I could try to answer all of the most common questions in one spot. Thanks for watching. And taking a few moments to leave a comment. It is greatly appreciated!

[@darrenrigby5687]

I knew it was worth going back to basic because you really do understand most aspects of wled and teach in such a great manner. I just learned even more wled wizardry! Thanks again buddy.

[@darrenrigby5687]

"really bright, for a second or two!" 😂

[@feliperaposo7229]

I have watched many videos of ESP devices + WLED and this one is by far the best and most detailed from all of them. Thank you, my friend!

[@ResinChemTech]

Thanks! I appreciate the kind words and glad you found the video helpful.

[@Nina-q2y]

this is amazing!! Thank you so much! I subscribed right away. You should really be a teacher! I am just getting into this and this was so concise. brought so many things together in one place! Thank you!!!!

[@ResinChemTech]

Thanks for the kind words. Glad you found the content helpful. Welcome to the channel!

[@Itzdavide]

You are very inspirational! I'm looking forward to doing my own projects using the knowledge that you have so generously shared. I know it takes a lot of work to prepare the materials you have shared on your various platforms. Your content is very detailed and excellent! Thank you for sharing your knowledge!

[@ResinChemTech]

Thanks so much for the kind words! I'm glad you find the content helpful and, while you are correct that it can be very time-consuming, I really enjoy trying to help out others that might just be starting out. Thanks again... for watching and the nice comment.

[@Theoriginal1981]

Such an informative video, well presented and dead helpful. Just starting out my first project, so this info has been invaluable 👍

[@ResinChemTech]

Thanks for the comment and kind words! Glad you found the video helpful. Just be forewarned... once you create that first LED project, it very likely won't be your last! If you find it helpful, I have a whole playlist of videos that I have made regarding LED and WLED projects, including how to build your first controller in about 15 minutes with no soldering: kzbin.info/aero/PLqjDNeOVHOkf079FYwRLRoOHJwLijKkP3&si=xEo_V7QKhsIiyIXR Thanks again for watching and for the comment.

[@mikedurden1219]

On the subject of power injection. An alternative method to ensure equal brightness of all leds would be to connect the +ve at one end of the strip and the - ve to the other end with supply wires of equal length. This way the voltage drop is automatically distributed between all of the leds over the entire length and they would automatically be of even brightness. This technique is used when changing parallel battery banks to ensure each battery gets equal share of the charge. I have not tried this so please correct me if I'm wrong.

[@rodneysmith1750]

Cool, I've been out of touch for the last week and a half traveling, it is so nice to get back home and have a brand new video for my favorite channel to watch, thanks for all your hard work!

[@ResinChemTech]

You are very welcome. Thanks for watching... and welcome home!

[@peterjameswalmsley9185]

I've skipped this video many times thinking it was about regular led strips, but after watching one of your other videos & subscribing I realised this video is about wled. Might be worth changing your title so people know it about wled, this video is Gold. Thanks

[@ResinChemTech]

Thanks for the tip. While I do use WLED for the examples in the video, I didn't limit the title to just WLED because the concepts apply to pretty much any DIY LED project, whether using WLED, ESPHome or even your own custom Arduino code for the controller firmware. But you are correct that a lot of folks may be looking specifically for WLED information and could potentially skip this video since WLED isn't mentioned in the title or shown on the thumbnail. I'll definitely consider modifying the title to include WLED. Thanks again!

[@martehoudesheldt5885]

12volt power supply- 12v led's- straight to led's and a buck module to the esp for the 5vdc. can put relay on led side to drop draw when lights are off.

[@danielsnyder6900]

Excellent tutorial, thanks. Level shifting was a recent topic for me and I use one from Adafruit, a 8-Channel Bi-Directional Logic Level Converter [ADA395]. I have built several WLED setups using Freenove ESP's with their breakout terminal board which I believe from the docs have level shifting using 74HC04's. Lastly I have a Quinn LED octo cpu board and a one of the power boards for another setup. Any way, thanks, your videos help me to re-enforce what I think I know and have learned from my own experiments.

[@ResinChemTech]

You are welcome! I've done a couple of videos just on the level shifter, including one where I compared the I2C-compatible shifters vs. the SN74AHCT125N side-by-side. It always seems to be a controversial topic, but as I always say, I just opt to always include the shifter in my projects... but everyone can make their own determination. Thanks for watching and taking a few minutes to leave a comment.

[@brucecraighead8528]

Hey thank you for this and the other WLED/ESP23 videos you have done , has been a big help and encouraging me to try more options with 2812b lights.

[@ResinChemTech]

You are very welcome... and thanks for the kind words and comment. I do appreciate it and am glad you find my videos helpful.

[@mrbranchatl]

Very thorough and you made it simple for the beginner to understand. thx

[@ResinChemTech]

Thanks! While it makes my videos longer than most, I try to explain the "why" as well as the "what" so that hopefully those new to DIY or home automation can grasp the concepts and adapt it to their own projects. Thanks for watching... and thanks for taking a few minutes to leave a comment. I appreciate it!

[@dansnedden]

Best and most informative video I have seen. Thank you.

[@ResinChemTech]

Thanks... I greatly appreciate it!

[@deadmusik9969]

@26.30 ish if you have three seperate terminals for power ( + + + , - - - , Ground Neutral Power ) , I had to set my adjustment voltage screw to 10.0, Then when I measured my devices the PSU was supplying 5v perfectly.

[@aaronb554]

Thank you for breaking this down! It's very helpful for a beginner!

[@ResinChemTech]

You are most welcome. We were all beginners at some point. And while I cover bits and pieces of all these topics on other LED videos that I've done, I thought it might be handy to put them all in a single video to make it easy to get an overall picture of using LEDs for someone just starting out. Thanks for watching and taking the time to leave a comment. It is much appreciated!

[@aaronb554]

@@ResinChemTech I'm researching to build my own tail lights. Any ideas on how to integrate the factory wiring to trigger a control board.

[@ResinChemTech]

I can theorize a few ideas, but to be completely honest, I would be concerned that introducing anything into a standard vehicle lighting system that could cause either a delay or point of failure into the tail/brake lights might be not only highly unsafe but also illegal. I'm definitely not a lawyer, but I do know that there are many, many regulations both at the federal and individual state levels regarding vehicle lighting and that often adding some sort of after-market device can fly in the face of those regulations. I realize that any sort of final decision on use and installation would be totally on you, but I just don't want to make any sort of recommendations that could lead to either an accident or a legal issue. Sorry, there aren't too many questions that I get where I won't try my best to help out. But on this particular issue, I'm just not comfortable sharing any of my ideas. I hope you can understand and respect that. I will say that yes, theoretically, it would be possible to build something that would use the vehicle system to trigger a controller that could then trigger/control the LEDs.

[@Mr1FTW]

Excellent! This helps me SO much since I am really new to all of this type of tinkering! Thank you for your time and effort! 👍

[@Mr1FTW]

Oh, and with regards to the power-supply - I was thinking about salvage a PSU from a PC - that outputs both 12v (output cable _yellow_ as standard) and 5v (output cable _red_ as standard) - all cooled and encapsulated with power-connector. Just need to learn how to transform the watt-value to amp-value (yep, still very beginner at this) so it is strong enough.

[@Mr1FTW]

Question power-injection: I understand that the injection need to be the same voltage - but does it need to be the same amp? Will it even help if I put a lower amp injection "along the way"? ...asking for a friend. ;)

[@ResinChemTech]

Please note the section of this video on power injection... use of multiple power supplies requires special balanced supplies and extreme caution is required to prevent one supply from back feeding to the other and causing all sorts of potential dangerous issues. It is much better to run separate +/- leads from the first power supply to the power injection point. It can theoretically be done if you cut the positive trace at the power injection point to prevent the two positives from the different power supplies from being connected, but I strongly recommend that you do not attempt to connect two different power supplies (even if they are identical supplies) to the same LED strip.

[@ResinChemTech]

You can certainly use a PSU from an old PC. In fact, I have a video where I made an old PSU into a benchtop power supply with 3.3V, 5V and 12V outputs ( kzbin.info/www/bejne/eJDQoZRmiZJsg7c ) and I talk about calculating amps from watts. But he amp rating is very easy to calculate: amps = watts/volts. So, just find the max watt rating for the 5V on the power supply and divide it by 5 to get max amps. But note this isn't the total wattage of the power supply. The total wattage includes the 3.3V and 12V outputs. Also note that you may need to bundle multiple 5V lines in the supply together to handle the higher amperage... as the multiple 5V lines in the power supply are smaller gauge since the 5V power is meant to be distributed. I talk about this as well in the above video and the related blog article on the power supply: resinchemtech.blogspot.com/2022/07/bench-top-power-supply.html But yes, as long as you build it properly, you can use a desktop computer power supply as a 5V source for your LED project.

[@ryanstaley1732]

Excellent video!! Since I’m new to wled this answered a lot of my questions! Thank you!!

[@ResinChemTech]

You are welcome! I'm glad you found it helpful. I had addressed a lot of these questions in different parts of different LED videos that I had done, so I thought it might be useful to pull all those together in one video for beginners and address the most common questions I have been asked throughout my other LED videos. Thanks for watching and taking time to leave a comment!

[@stolz5573]

Excellent video and very helpful! Much appreciated and thanks for your time and for sharing.

[@ResinChemTech]

You are very welcome. I'm glad you found it helpful. And thanks to you for taking time to leave a comment. I do appreciate it!

[@MultiAlex0815]

perfect--- helps me a lot . great teaching style-- love it this way -- keep on !!

[@ResinChemTech]

Thanks. I know it makes for a very long video, but hopefully by adding the chapter breaks, it will allow people to come back to the video and just watch a particular section if they have questions about that topic. Thanks for watching and taking time to leave a comment. I appreciate it!

[@MultiAlex0815]

@@ResinChemTech you are welcome... love your style

[@Inductiong]

You're awesome as ever! I really enjoyed this video. Thanks

[@ResinChemTech]

Wow! Thanks a lot. Hopefully you found something helpful for use in your own projects.

[@ShadowzGSD]

A lot of useful information, the only thing i do that you do not mention is to add a relay to turn on/off my power supply when i have a small 5v supply to WLED and a bigger for the leds.

[@ResinChemTech]

I have done that for a few of my projects, and I actually show using a Shelly 1PM behind a standard wall switch to shut off the power to my outdoor LED porch lights project. More recent versions of WLED actually support using a relay as well. Thanks for watching and taking time to share your additional idea.

[@jardelainen8278]

Great and detailed video, thank you.

[@ResinChemTech]

You are welcome. Glad you found it helpful! Thanks for the comment.

[@wendellp601]

Great video! For a cheap project box, I've used a $0.97 travel soap container from the Mega-Mart.

[@ResinChemTech]

Another great option! Before I had my 3D printer, I used all sorts of various plastic boxes for controllers. I think that you just have to be a little creative and you can find all sorts of options to substitute for the 3D printed enclosures I show in some of my LED project videos. Thanks for watching!

[@TheUnofficialMaker]

I found 0ne for 88 cents.

[@MaNameizJeff]

Watching your use of level shifters I have been going over the usage of my 8255 boards. So I've been using the lolin d1 mini to power some LED strips that are 50 or less for holiday decorations. Lighting up pumpkin stacks, 2 foot trees, ect. The method I watched and use to power the LED is off the VBUS port, and then I use the third pin (2) for data (default for wled). This has given me no issues so far.. I have as much as a meter of wire in the data signal and never experienced led control issues. Also whats confusing me now is, I looked it up and VBUS was intended to be a 5 volt power in to externally power the board. How am I using it to do the opposite for my 5v leds? It is powered by USB-C now (more reliable 3amp power) and I am using the 1amp limiter in WLED. As it is used for colorful effects in a display it is not needing more than %50 brightness or sustained white. Your thoughts?

[@ResinChemTech]

As I believe I mention here (and in numerous other videos were I talk about a level shifter), you can often get by without one... until you can't. You may be able to get away with 3+ feet (or more) of data line with no shifter for one install, but have issues with another seemingly identical install with an even shorter data run. I just always include a shifter to boost the data line signal from the 3.3V of the GPIO pin to 5V expected by the LEDs so I don't have to be concerned as to whether I might have problems or not, possibly even due to slight tolerance differences between strips/controllers, etc. But as I always say, "it's your project, so you can opt to include or omit the shifter". But as someone just posted under one of my videos, it can be a real pain to go back and retrofit a shifter after the build if you discover a problem. It's much easier to just include it at the start... even if you might have been able to omit it. For me, the ~$1 and a few extra minutes to wire it up is worth the extra insurance. And as you have discovered, you can run limited power through the ESP board to power the LEDs, but it is a bit risky with anything more than a handful of LEDs. As most reliable documentation states, the max current on the 5V pin of the ESP8266 is 500 mA. Even using the 1A limiter in WLED, you could potentially pull too much current in certain situations, which will generally lead to a failure of the ESP board. Again, like the shifter, your results may vary. But best practice would be to run the power to the LEDs in parallel with the controller and not _through_ the controller. I just prefer to not worry about the amount of current running through the controller, so I always wire up my LED power in parallel. But that doesn't mean it won't work powering it off the controller board... the board may work fine or may fail after a short time or if overtaxed at some point. I haven't used an 8255 so I'm not familiar with its specs. It may be different than the ESP8266/ESP32 boards I generally use. Not sure if that addresses what you were asking, but for my own "best practices" (based on many failures or issues over the years), I always include the shifter and power the LEDs in parallel.

[@MaNameizJeff]

@@ResinChemTech sorry if you looked at the d1 mini, I just butter fingered the 5 key on my phone. They are 8266. Theres been so many revisions to these boars over the years it's hard to pin down all the upgrades that could explain some things working. I am currently using just the mounting pins and no boards so I think I will look into improving my workflow and inventory with some boards and introduce the shifters. It would be nice if there was an esp32 variant that already had one built in.

[@ResinChemTech]

No problem! You are right that there are so many different types of boards today, it is hard to keep up! And I started out just like you... wiring directly to the pin on the board. I think some of my very early videos even show me doing that. But since that time, I've learned quite a bit about general electronics (amps/current, voltages, etc.) and a lot more about the ESP boards as well. And I've fried a lot of components along the way! The one thing I've learned is that while something might "work" doing it in a particular way, it may not be the best or ideal way. But that's part of DIY... you break a few eggs in the process of making the perfect omelet! While I have a whole series of LED and WLED-related videos, if you want to slowly start moving towards a more standard/reliable design, you might start with this video on creating a WLED controller on a breadboard in about 15 minutes with no soldering. A lot of the concepts in this video are shown in the controller build as well: kzbin.info/www/bejne/momvgKR9lpKha6M And I'm always happy to try to help out and answer any questions. Oh... if you are interested in a prebuilt version (with the shifter and other features included), you might take a look at Quindor's Dig boards. I've used one of these myself and they have a lot of benefits: quinled.info/pre-assembled-quinled-dig-uno/

[@robertperkins4909]

Just bought your Dig2go from Dr. ZZZ. Great product. Now I'd like to have 3 of the WS2412b strips @ 60 LEDs per meter, totaling around 7.25 meters ~435 LEDs. At 20mA per LED, I seem to need around 27 A. Am I doing this right? What connectors do you suggest, considering I will have to run wiring between the strips? Thanks for your help.

[@ResinChemTech]

Your calculations are correct... you'd probably want a 5V 30A power supply to be able to safely run the LEDs at full brightness white. You can use a smaller power supply, but you will need to use the brightness limiter in WLED to assure you don't overtax the power supply. But do note that the Dig2Go is only rated for a maximum throughput of 3A (see this: quinled.info/quinled-dig2go/ ). This means you need to run separate power to your LED strips and not power them directly thru the Dig2Go or significantly lower the brightness be able to power that many LEDs. You may also want to watch Quindor's video (he is the developer of the Dig2Go), especially the section called "some compromises". While the Dig2Go is a great little device, it really isn't meant for large LED installations. That's where his other boards like the DigQuad come into play that are rated for much higher amperage. As far as connectors, I like to use the WAGO level nuts if my installation can accommodate them. In cases where I have to minimize the wiring connections size, I simply solder the wires and use a little heat shrink. I hope that's helpful. I haven't used a Dig2Go, but I do recommend that you assure that all components used in your project are rated to handle the amps you expect the LEDs to draw.

[@johnkoester6534]

Another great video. Thanks for all your work.

[@ResinChemTech]

You are welcome. And thanks to you for taking time to post a comment. I greatly appreciate it.

[@GantryG]

Thanks, this info is super-helpful! 👍

[@ResinChemTech]

You are most welcome. Glad you found the info helpful.

[@michaelmacho1]

Great video thank you. Very informative for us beginners

[@ResinChemTech]

You are welcome. As I mentioned, I cover a lot of this information in bits and pieces in other LED videos so I thought it might be good to pull all of the most common questions together into a single video. Thanks for watching and taking time to comment. Don't hesitate to reach back out if you run into any questions or issues that I didn't address.

[@lycakito1814]

great video, just starting into this... thanks

[@ResinChemTech]

You are welcome. I tried to answer the most common questions I receive on LEDs that are answered in bits and pieces throughout a number of my different videos. For someone that is just getting started, I decided to put all these in one video so that someone didn't have to go searching around a bunch of different videos for answers to the various questions. I hope you found it helpful. Thanks for taking the time to post a comment.

[@lycakito1814]

@@ResinChemTech It's great, thanks - I was a bit confused about power injection - but I followed one of your small LED strip 'get started video' that helped me start. Now I have 180 LEDs doing a fireplace animation 😁. No stopping me now! When you're working on a budget, it's great these DIY projects exists as some of the non-DIY can be pretty expensive.

[@Supermath101]

I've heard that the ESP32-C series of chips are meant to replace the ESP8266, whereas the ESP32-S series of chips are meant to replace the original ESP32.

[@ResinChemTech]

Well, I think it depends somewhat upon the needs of your project.... types and numbers of certain GPIO pins, whether you need Bluetooth or not, etc. Of course as a general rule, the ESP32 series are always going to be more "powerful"/faster then the ESP8266 series. But my take is to select the best processor for the job... all other things being equal. If I am just going to run a strip of say 30 LEDs under a cabinet, I really don't need the extra horsepower of an ESP32. However, if I am using Bluetooth or am going to use the controller with Bluetooth proxy, then I'll want an ESP32 with Bluetooth. Sometimes the firmware that I select can also drive the selection. For example, the latest versions of sound-reactive WLED no longer supports the ESP8266... so I have to use an ESP32 in that case. For most other projects, especially those where I'm writing custom Arduino firmware, I can often use either family of MCUs. Again, for me it comes down to the needs of the project, the firmware I'm using and what sensors or other peripherals I'm attaching to the ESP board. I generally don't want to pay for a more expensive controller if I'm not going to take advantage of that extra horsepower, when a lower cost processor will do the job just fine. I think all the different variants of ESP32 boards can be confusing... and occasionally misleading, especially if purchased from a questionable vendor. But I think the ESP8266 is going to be around for a while due to its very low cost and its wide usage in many IoT devices.

[@ronaldmallett6629]

long live the esp8266, ive designed a quick board with a fuse and 2 button connections about $1 per pcb very impressed

[@ResinChemTech]

I'm with you on the ESP8266... especially the D1 Mini due to its small footprint. While I get a lot of requests for an "ESP32" version of many of my projects... and there are certainly times an ESP32 can provide an advantage... in many cases the ESP8266 is perfectly capable and the ESP32 is simply overkill. But I fear that the ESP8266 is going to eventually disappear and the ESP32 will take its place. I also recently designed my first PCB (for my LED clock) and was really impressed at how quickly and how low cost they were. I will definitely be designing additional PCBs in the future. Thanks for watching!

[@Happy2bAmerican]

Thanks so much! What did u connect the injected power from the Led to? The transformer?

[@ResinChemTech]

Yes, the lines for power injection come directly from the power supply. You can split off multiple lines from the power supply if necessary and use something like Wago lever nuts or simple wire nuts if you need to create multiple injection points. But in practice, the lines used for power injection run directly back to the power supply and that way they don't experience the voltage drop like the power passing through the LEDs.

[@johnshannon814]

Just curious if you have tried any of the seeed studio esp32 boards and if so if there are differences with those and the boards you've shown here

[@ResinChemTech]

No, I haven't tried any of those boards. But in most cases an ESP32 is an ESP32 (assuming they are the same variant). So I think some of the primary differences are things like USB-C instead of microUSB, additional grove connectors, battery monitoring or other peripherals added to the development board. Again, I haven't tried any, but if the ESP32 chips are the same... and the same GPIO pins are broken out, etc., I would suspect that they would function the same with something like WLED or other firmware designed for the ESP32.

[@artursilva7635]

Thanks!😀

[@karelkral6812]

Good and very informative video, thanks.

[@ResinChemTech]

You are welcome! Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment.

[@bennyben8390]

Hi good informative video. Just a quick question, I’ve got 3 times 5 metre length led strips with 60 LEDs per metre. What will be the best power source to power all the LEDs for full bright lights. Cheers

[@ResinChemTech]

I cover how to calculate the size power supply you need in the section on power supplies (18:50). You may wish to watch that section of the video. You don't say what LEDs you are using, but assuming these are 5V WS2812b, you take the total number of LEDs (900 in your case if you use all of them) and multiply that by 0.06A for full brightness white. That's going to give you up to 54 A required. To maintain full brightness with no brightness limiters, you are going to want at least a 60 A power supply. At this amperage, I'd probably fuse the system. And be sure to use appropriate gauge wire and appropriately rated connectors, as that kind of current can quickly melt thinner wire or underrated components.

[@bennyben8390]

@@ResinChemTech hi thanks for the information really appreciate, I was asking what kind of power supply would be ideal and best to use in this setup. Cheers

[@johnjacobjinglehimerschmid3555]

So if the voltage for lighting the string of LED's drop. Doesn't the data line also have voltage drop issues?

[@ResinChemTech]

No... the data signal is "boosted" by each LED pixel before it is passed down the line. Yes, the signal is boosted by the 5V line and as this drops, the voltage on the data signal will also drop. But you will see issues with the low voltage in terms of fading/shifting colors on the 5V before the data signal becomes an issue. The only time you need to worry about voltage drop of the data line after it reaches the first LED is if you have a long gap between successive segments of LEDs... for example, maybe with outdoor lights on your house where you might have a gap between different segments. In that case, there are signal boosters that can boost that data signal back up again.

[@Vidal2021]

Is there a controller that has shown to be very reliable? I purchased esp32 and esp8266. Both, after a 2-5 power cycles, no longer connected to the app. Then only the esp32 will allow connection with the wifi and local address. I had to reflash/update the fw on the esp8266 to get it connected. But, again both reverted to not connecting with the app. I'm looking to use these in many led projects, but I can't move past a bench setup if I can not reply on the units functionality.

[@ResinChemTech]

Not sure what your issue could be. I have nearly two dozen WLED installs with a mix of ESP8266 and ESP32 and I haven't ever experienced the issue you are describing. I have occasionally received a bad board or two that wouldn't flash, but none that seemed to 'reset' or required re-flashing to get back online. Do you have any peripherals like pushbuttons attached? Note that there are features/functions built-in that can reset the WiFi or even erase the flash. For example, if a pushbutton is connected to Button 0 in WLED, then holding that button down for >6 seconds will clear the WiFi and holding it for >12 seconds will erase the flash. If you have any additional hardware attached to the controller, you might test without anything but the LEDs connected. There has also been talk about adding a 'factory reset' by power cycling the device a set number of times within a set time frame, but I think that is currently only available via a user mod and not part of the standard WLED firmware (I'm not 100% positive on that one... you may need to check release notes/documentation to see if a power-cycle reset has been added and it is your multiple power cycles that are actually resulting in a reset of the firmware). Short of that, you might either try Googling your issue or posting something over on the WLED Discord to see if others have had a similar issue and/or have a fix. Since I haven't seen this issue, I really can't tell you what it might be or how to resolve it. The boards I generally used are linked to down in the video description for this video.

[@tjvanswala]

Great video! Thank you

[@ResinChemTech]

You are welcome. Glad you enjoyed it... and thanks to you for taking time to post a comment.

[@michaelthompson657]

Could you go further into using a pi to control wled? I have a spare pi 3b 👍🏻

[@ResinChemTech]

With the Pi, you will have to download and install Python libraries to allow you to send a valid signal to the LEDs. Then you will either have to write your own application to control them, or find an application that someone else has developed. I don't believe any of the firmware options I showed will work with the Pi, as they are designed for use with the ESP boards. I personally haven't used a Pi to control LED strips. I did have one for my original parking assistant, which used an LED matrix, but I have since replaced that with an ESP8266 and a strip of WS2812b LEDs. For me, it is hard to justify the cost of a Pi, SD card, etc. over the $2-$3 cost of an ESP board. I have some spare Pis, but I try to save those for projects where the ESP board isn't powerful enough. But I understand that you already have a Pi on hand. I'm sure you can find plenty of videos and other online sources on using a Pi to control LED strips. Sorry I can't offer any other real help here because, while it is definitely possible to do, it's just not something I've done myself.

[@michaelthompson657]

@@ResinChemTech no problem, thanks for that. I suppose with the esp boards being so cheap it’s probably so much easier using them. Thanks for the info!

[@nicht_Verfuegbar.]

Can I put my Controller in between two LED strips or do I get a short circuit? I want to use a 300 pixel led strip on the right side and a 340 pixel led strip on the left side. I can only draw power in between those two strips. I want to use the 3 Pin connecter on both strips for the controller and the power injection cables for the power supply of the strips. Near the end of the 340 pixels I also want to inject power.

[@ResinChemTech]

I'm not completely sure I understand what you are asking, but if I do, then I run two different LED strips for my stairs off of one controller and one power supply. But as I talk about in this video, you cannot pull that kind of current/amps through the controller board. You can connect 5V to the LED strips pretty much anywhere, but if you want to use the 3-pin JST connectors, you will need to modify one so that the 5V/GND are coming directly from your power supply and only the LED data line is coming from the controller. You can repeat this same setup with the second LED strip. Take a look again at the section of the video where I talk about connecting a power supply or at the diagrams under section on connecting power supplies and LEDs in my blog: resinchemtech.blogspot.com/2023/01/wiring-diagrams.html

[@nicht_Verfuegbar.]

@@ResinChemTech Thanks for your quick repley. I will follow your advice and to be honest I never thought you would anwser. This shows how much you care about your community. My greatest respect.

[@quicklight4626]

I am working with a single high powered RGBW led. I am wanting to use a ESP 32 (or equivalent ) to control each Chanel and I want to use a constant current power. I can't seem to find a c.c.driver that utilizes the ESP 32. Do you know of a way to use the ESP 32 as a c.c. device?

[@ResinChemTech]

Unfortunately, other than using PWM to control brightness (which isn't truly constant current), I don't know of a way to use the ESP32 alone to provide constant current. I'm not sure I fully understand what you are necessarily trying to accomplish, but you did mention high powered LED and remember that the GPIO pins on the ESP board are only able to handle very small current draws. Sorry I'm not able to be more helpful here. I did try a quick Google search for "esp32 constant current led", which did appear to turn up some options, but again, I don't know if any of those would be exactly what you are looking for or not.

[@quicklight4626]

@@ResinChemTech thanks for your reply! Each channel will max out at 1.5 amps (more likely 1.2-1.3 amps). I seen someone on KZbin that built a circuit with a capacitor, diode, and maybe a resistor. They used 2 channels (if I remember correctly). 1 channel as a pwm and another channel as a target amperage. Again I can't quite remember how he did it. I just assumed that I am probably not the only person looking to use an esp32 as a pwm to control a relatively simple circuit to power a high power led and thought maybe it was something already made on a small circuit board, apparently not haha. Thanks for your help

[@Vidal2021]

Will the android app Not connect to the esp if leds are not wired? I flashed the esp and with the usb powering it, and nothing else attached, I can access the wifi, but the android app says the light is offline.

[@ResinChemTech]

It should connect to the controller regardless of whether the LEDs are connected or not. Double check that both devices are on the same wifi network and that the WLED device in the app has the proper IP address. You might try deleting the existing device in the app and manually re-adding it by the current IP address.

[@frankperfecto1059]

I got a bit lost with the power injection,where was the other end of the injection wires?

[@ResinChemTech]

The ends of most LED strips, where the JST connectors are located, you will normally find an extra two wires (usually red and white) that can be used to inject power. But note that you can inject power anywhere it is needed by simply soldering your +V and GND directly to the appropriate copper pads on the LED strip. So, as a rule of thumb, if you need power injection, you'd start by injecting at the end of the LED stirp(s). If additional injection is needed, you can inject midway along the strips by soldering directly to the copper pads. I hope that clears things up a bit.

[@frankperfecto1059]

Sorry im trying to learn/understand . Are the injection wires connected to end of the strips and the power supply?( @27:51 i see the ground and + wire connected to the wagos,but not sure where it goes since wires go up and out of frame 😬) . actually you did say “5v from the power supply,its just i dont see any additional wires connected to power supply after injecting) Also i have notes and learned from your video,thanks for responding

[@ResinChemTech]

No problem... As I stated in the video, those wires are coming directly from the 5V power supply. As you saw in the video, once your LED strip gets long enough, the voltage will drop low enough that the LEDs can no longer fully light up. In this case, you need to take voltage from your power supply and "inject" additional voltage into the LED strip. This can be at the end of the strip or wherever else it is needed (as I described in my previous reply). So you need to take the +V and GND wires from the power supply and run them to wherever you need to inject that power. You then connect those two wires to the the LEDs... either through the provided wires (as shown in the video), or by soldering to the +V and GND copper pads on the LED strip.

[@frankperfecto1059]

@@ResinChemTech Your the best! Thank you a bunch ResinChemTech!!

[@radioactive.rocket]

Thank you very much for the highly helpful and informative video! I posted a comment yesterday as I have been thinking about buying 5m of SK6812 LED strip lights at 60 LEDs/m (300 LEDs total) to put under my bedframe however I am unsure as to the safety of my setup. I believe my comment may have been held for review as I included links to products and I can now sadly only see it if I am signed in to this account.

[@ResinChemTech]

You are very welcome! And yes, I now see that you were correct about your original comment. Comments with links (or certain other words) are automatically held for review by KZbin. Unfortunately, unlike other comments, I don't receive a notification when a comment is held... I have to remember to intentionally check for held comments. As to your questions, first off congrats on being concerned about current and overheating! And while it is true that each LED could draw up to 60 mA, "real world" use will likely be substantially less. You will be surprised at how bright 300 LEDs can be, even at 50% brightness. In addition, you can use the brightness limiter in WLED to assure that the LEDs do not draw too much current. So, if you use a 10A power supply, you can set the brightness limiter to 8 A (you don't want to continuously run a power supply much over about 80% of its rated max). As far as the connectors (barrel and otherwise), you are correct that the barrel adapter (usually green) that allows you to connect bare wire to the barrel jack is NOT rated for more than a couple of amps and can easily melt under higher current. You can purchase barrel jack leads in various wire gauges depending upon current. For example, my WLED Christmas tree has 500 LEDs, so I use these 12 gauge connectors for all my power runs: amzn.to/3YbfV1L 12-gauge can generally handle ~20A depending upon a number of factors (type of wire, length of run, temperature, etc.). And for any projects that are more than a couple of amps, I will run a full bench test before installation. I will connect everything and run the lights on max brightness I expect to use. I will monitor closely, checking wiring, connectors, controller, etc. for excess heat. If any component or wire is getting more than just slightly warm to the touch after running for a bit, I need to re-evaluate the connector/wiring, etc. As an extra precaution, you can also add fuses to your install to assure current is not exceeded. What size fuses and where? That all depends. Quindor over at @IntermitTech has an outstanding (albeit long) video on power injection, power supply and wire gauge size: kzbin.info/www/bejne/i57SZ52BgcuqqbM It is well worth the watch for learning how to calculate current and voltage needs when it comes to LED strips. Hope that info helps... and sorry I didn't see your original comment.

[@radioactive.rocket]

​@@ResinChemTech thank you very much for the reply! Due to your feedback I think I will get a 5V 10A power supply for this project, as most of the power supplies in the 'brick' type that are over 10A in current seem sketchy at best and I don't really want to go for the other type as I do not want to plug in the 230-240V mains power directly to the power supply as I feel that small errors could lead to significant consequences. The Athom pre-built controller that I chose for the project also has an inbuilt barrel connector which would allow for easy insertion of the power supply with this type of power supply as well. To have full brightness for the dedicated white (as I am using a SK6812) ​I believe it would use around 6A which the 10A power supply would be able to provide even at the current limit of 8000mA in the WLED software, so I think for my circumstances it would work quite well. In terms of the selected power supply I originally chose a supply from BTF-Lighting which I linked in the original comment, however I have found cheaper ones on Amazon and AliExpress, however I am unsure whether the BTF-Lighting unit would be the safer option as I have heard good things about their LED strips. Once again thank you very much for reading my comment, I really appreciate it!

[@ResinChemTech]

Always glad to try and help out! It sounds like you are on the right track... and I always use the brightness limiter in WLED and, like you, set it to about 80% of the max peak output of the power supply. As far as brands... well, I've had two power supplies fail on me over the past year, but these had been 'in service" for 2-3 years, powered on 24/7. One was an Alitove, but the other was actually a BTF-Lighting supply. Both were the larger "transformer" style (not the brick versions). So pretty much any of them can potentially fail. The one thing I ALWAYS do, regardless of size/style of the power supply, is check the voltage output with a multimeter before connecting it to any components. While the larger "transformer" styles have a voltage adjustment screw, the "brick" style does not. So I not only assure proper voltage, but that the output is steady and consistent as well. Hope that provides just a little more info.

[@ethelbertbodden3449]

Question I have make 3 controller and install WLED and intergrade in home assistant, but every afternoon same time they are turning on by then self by service light.turn_on in home assistant

[@ResinChemTech]

You should check your Home Assistant automations. Find the light entity under developer tools/states and then click the three dots and related info. This should list any automations where that light is used. You can then look at those automations to see if this is the source of the reason the lights are turning on each day at the same time.

[@ethelbertbodden3449]

Thanks for your reply I reach not using any automation with the wled. I checked the logbook and it show wled Firmware turned off and Firmware became unknown then service light.turn_on and then all lights that is under service light.turn_on they all turning on at the same time

[@usa-earth]

So, not sure if this has been asked, but I am using ESP32s with 12V, 5 in 1 BTF lighting strips. Is there an issue for the data at 3.3v for the ESP32 going to the strip at 12v? If there is, how do I overcome it? Any clarification much appreciated!

[@ResinChemTech]

I've not worked with these strips, so I can't say with certainly. But most 12V addressable LED strips still expect a 5V data signal. So, the process to boost the data line from 3.3V from the ESP32 to the 5V expected by the LEDs would be the same for both 5V and 12V LED stirps. Again, do note that I have not experimented with these LEDs. They do not appear to be "addressable" so while you can have many different colors, the entire strip will always be the same color. I'm not sure what firmware you may be planning on running on your ESP32, but it if it WLED, also note that while WLED does support non-addressable LEDs, some additional hardware is required per the official site: kno.wled.ge/basics/compatible-hardware/ I would suggest you locate the data/spec sheet for these particular LED strips and see what voltage is expected on the individual R, G, B, W1 and W2 data lines.

[@usa-earth]

@@ResinChemTech THANKS Sir!!! UGH! I ordered the wrong ones! These, (BTF-LIGHTING WS2811 IC=RGB IC Addressable Dream Color LED Strip 16.4FT 60LEDs/m 20Pixels/m 300LEDs 100pixels Non-Waterproof White PCB Flexible DC12V) are addressable in groups of 3 which should work fine with WLED, right?

[@ResinChemTech]

Yep... those should work fine with WLED. Note that these just have the three wire connection (12V, GND and Data) like the 5V WS2812b... as opposed to the 6 wire connection of those 5 in 1 strips. So, if you want/need to include the level shifter, you can wire it just like I show with the WS2812b strips to boost the data signal from 3.3 to 5V. Good luck... and let me know if you have any additional questions.

[@usa-earth]

@@ResinChemTech Thanks so much! Since I am going with 12v strips, I need to power the ESP32 with the micro USB, right, because the power supply being at 12v would kill it?

[@ResinChemTech]

You can either step down the 12V to power the controller or power the controller via USB. However, if you use a separate power supply for the controller, you MUST create a common ground between the controller and LED strip or your LEDs are going to misbehave and act really weird. I show both options for wiring 12V LEDs with a 5V controller in my standard wiring diagrams: resinchemtech.blogspot.com/2023/01/wiring-diagrams.html I generally use a small buck/step-down converter mounted on the ElectroCookie to step the voltage down from 12 to 5V so that I only have one power supply... and therefore I only need one AC outlet. But you can use the USB power supply on the ESP32... just remember to create the common ground.

[@OGKenG]

For my "project box," I went to the dollar store and bought a plastic travel soap container and put my ESP32 in it. Punched some holes for wiring and a bunch for cooling and it works fine.

[@ResinChemTech]

Yeah, I think someone else here mentioned using a soap container as an enclosure for the controller. I saw another viewer that actually used a restaurant carry-out container as an enclosure (it actually looked pretty nice). There are a lot of different possibilities and options for making enclosures or other parts when a 3D printer isn't available. Thanks for watching and sharing a good idea for those that may not have a 3D printer.

[@ethelbertbodden3449]

Hi thanks for your video they are really helpful

[@ResinChemTech]

You are most welcome.. and I'm really happy you find them helpful!

[@Vidal2021]

Can you control 12v led with these if you step-down the controller input to 5v?

[@ResinChemTech]

Yes, you can use something like a buck/stepdown converter to step down the 12/24V to 5V for powering the controller. I talk about that in some of my other LED videos and you can see some wiring examples and different options in my written wiring diagrams for LED controllers: resinchemtech.blogspot.com/2023/01/wiring-diagrams.html

[@Vidal2021]

Thank you.

[@happyboho1687]

Can the D1 be used an replace a 8266 or a 32 please ?

[@ResinChemTech]

I'm not sure what you are asking. The D1 Mini _is_ an ESP8266. There is also an ESP32 mini version. In most cases, you can use either an ESP8266 (or D1 Mini) or ESP32. But you need to check the firmware requirements. For example, sound reactive WLED only works with the ESP32. Very large numbers of LEDs may also require an ESP32 for good performance. But for most smaller LED installs, you can select either type of ESP.

[@happyboho1687]

@@ResinChemTech that’s exactly what i was asking I just didn’t express myself properly, thank you 🙏