A bit new to WLED, but pretty familiar with tech in general.
I’m trying to setup a pretty long WLED setup with a 2812b LED Strip (30 Led/m).
I purchased an external power supply with max 150W for 5V and wired it as such (without the capacity)
The brightness feature does not seem to do anything. And I believe it could be brighter although there is no lack of power. Anything I’m missing ?
I thought of splitting the power from the ESP32 and the ledstrip to avoid overpowering the ESP32 board. So powering the ESP32 from a USB-C cable and powering the Led strip directly and obviously connecting the green control cable. That does not seem to work at all (only a few lights work and no control). Others seem to get that to work but not for me
The best practice for wiring is to follow what is listed in the kb ( I mean do exactly as listed and you will see that things will work in a better and safe way ) https://kno.wled.ge/basics/getting-started/
In addition to @jinx’s notes (which are all good), that barrel connector you show as connection to your 5V supply is typically only useful up to 3A. After that, those connectors start to overheat and eventually melt.
3A @ 5V => 15W
Although you don’t give the full length of your strip, it’s very likely you’ll need to get more than 15W of power to your LEDs (especially in the worst case of 100% White). Your power wiring is very likely suspect.
The split USB-C power for the ESP is not a bad idea, but you’ll need at least an extra ground wire from the ESP to the lights to ensure you have common ground.
Remember the 3 Laws of WLED:
Power for your LEDs comes from your power supply with proper wiring.
Data for your LEDs comes from your data supply (ESP) with proper wiring.
Proper wiring for data is not the same as for power and vice versa.
