# Driving 5 PWM RGBW strips at once?

**URL:** <https://wled.discourse.group/t/driving-5-pwm-rgbw-strips-at-once/10867>\
**Category:** Questions\
**Created:** [January 23, 2024, 2:48am UTC](https://wled.discourse.group/t/driving-5-pwm-rgbw-strips-at-once/10867 "2024-01-23T02:48:27Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![mgerring](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/wled.discourse.group/mgerring/32/7002_2.png) [@mgerring](https://wled.discourse.group/u/mgerring)\
**Post date:** [January 23, 2024, 2:48am UTC](https://wled.discourse.group/t/driving-5-pwm-rgbw-strips-at-once/10867/1 "2024-01-23T02:48:27Z")

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I have an ESP32 with PWM pins wired to MOSFETs to drive 5 analog RGBW strips. 4 of them work fine, but the 5th won’t save the pin assignments in WLED settings. Presumably this is because the ESP32 only has 16 channels for PWM. So my question is — what is the easiest way around this?

If I were to use a second ESP32 just for the 5th strip, is there a way to hard-wire the first to the second and not depend on a network connection? Is there any other way to drive more than 16 pwm channels with a single ESP32? Anything else I should consider?

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**Author:** ![blazoncek](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/wled.discourse.group/blazoncek/32/1886_2.png) [@blazoncek](https://wled.discourse.group/u/blazoncek)\
**Post date:** [January 23, 2024, 11:05am UTC](https://wled.discourse.group/t/driving-5-pwm-rgbw-strips-at-once/10867/2 "2024-01-23T11:05:12Z")

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There are only 16 LEDC channels on ESP32. Each LEDC channel drives one MOSFET.  
That is a hardware limitation.