WLED LED Light Strip Controller ESP32 with Mic Download, Addressable LED Controller RGB RGBW WS2812B SK6812 WS2811 TM1814 WS2813 WS2815 5-24V DIY

Typically, I use bare ESP32 boards for my WLED projects, but I decided to try this to make my life a bit easier for a project adding under cabinet lighting to my kitchen. First thing I did is pop this open and confirm there is actually an ESP32 inside, and there is. Perfect. Then I hooked it up to some LEDs and a power supply I had laying around and that’s it. So easy. And the easy connections are so much better than my typical bad soldering (and probably safer too). I’ll be buying these for all my WLED projects in the future.

If you're here, you're probably on some spectrum of DIY, I'm just a newbie. I am using this with the BTF-LIGHTING FCOB WS2814 RGBWIC RGB+4000K HDU LED Strip (DC24V 784LED/m 70IC 10mm). The controller came with a fairly recent version of WLED, 0.13.3, which did not support this strip correctly. The best it could do out of the box was to work MOSTLY well as a SK6812, but the B and W channels were flipped. Fortunately, I opted to get the UART model so I could update it. Updating it to 0.14.1, I could see now that I could select SK6812/WS2814 RGBW. This still had the same issue, but playing with the options a bit, I found the solution: Color Order BRG, and Swap W & G. Now I have brilliant colors that respond very quickly, I can customize my own effects, and integrate with a non-corporate assistant like Home Assistant, and all the other wonderful things that an ESP32 system gets you, no soldering needed. Here are the steps for TL;DR: 1) need to flash the ESP32/WLED chip to at least 0.14.1 2) In Config -> LED Preferences, choose "SK6812/WS2814 RGBW" (which is now a valid option) 3) Choose color order BRG 4) Choose swap W&G

The controller itself is great — good price, works well with WLED, and easy to set up. However, the data output signal quality is poor, even without an LED strip connected. When using a longer cable, the signal becomes heavily distorted, and the LED strip starts glitching or stops working entirely. I’ve attached oscilloscope screenshots showing the issue. The root cause seems to be a weak pull-up and a ferrite bead in series with the data line. After modifying the board — adding an extra 1kΩ resistor to strengthen the pull-up and removing the ferrite bead — the signal became clean and stable. Now it works perfectly even with a long cable.

Made my Christmas light display work perfect. Not much more I could want, except an infrared receiver. No biggy, though.

This is a great, simple device for controlling individually addressable LED strips (such as the WS2812B). The ESP32 version with "Download" (UART) has an internal MicroUSB port which makes it super easy to change the firmware. It can work with a good range of voltages, and overall it's a very well-designed device. The only thing that I don't like about it is that it constantly supplies power to the LED strand even when no LEDs are active. I wish there was a true "off" for the power output.

I got more from an esp32e

Awesome product. I have tried MANY. This is my new #1. Will replace all of my products with this one. Govee is #2 because they disconnect from the network occasionally. But if you want to cut and custom this is the one.

It’s easy to operate this controller with WLED. However, I primarily selected this controller because of the built-in microphone, and overall, I was somewhat underwhelmed (fully unimpressed) with the sound responsiveness. I eventually returned it.