A quick preface. I have no idea what I’m doing. I have watched YouTube videos and tried to follow what shown in them.
OK with that behind me. I am having trouble getting my WS2811 led lights to work. I have an ESP32 board with WLED Version 0.14.0-b1. I think the LED string is OK because if I disconnect the data wire of the ESP32 the LED string comes on full strength, albeit in random colors. The moment I connect the data wire they go off. I am guessing I either have a config issue with the ESP32 or a wiring issue from the two power supplies (see below).
Since the LED string wants a higher voltage than the ESP32, I have two power supplies. I am guessing this is where things start to fall apart. I have one power supply that that powers the ESP32 at 4 volts and another that powers the LEDs at 24 volts. I have wired the VIN and GND pins from the ESP32 to the +V and -V of power supply and have gotten the web interface of WLED to work and apparently respond to the commands as the ESP32 red and blue lights flicker when I save settings in the WLED config pages. I wired the D2 pin of the ESP32 to the DI wire of the LED strip.
Below are links to the products.
Any thoughts or suggestions? I’d love suggestions on figuring out whether its a wiring or config issue and then go from there.
If you’ve got the WLED GUI connected on your browser, that’s a good sign.
You’re probably using the wrong GPIO data pin on the ESP32.
Check what WLED has under Config->LED Preferences->LED outputs:->GPIO:.
That shows you what GPIO pin is be used to send data (default is GPIO16 now?).
Move your data wire to that pin and test. You can reconfigure for another pin as well, although GPIO2 is not always a good choice as the onboard blue LED can conflict with the data stream (depends on the board).
Yes, I have all the GPIO pins configured as wired. The installation works well, and al sequences work well, the only problem is that it flashes every some seconds.
Hi, you mean wiring together all power supplies GNDs directly? That is very difficult to do right now, it seems to not be a wiring problem: when using commertial controllers the flash is not there, is not there when I freeze the outputs on WLED, it only appears when I am using my ESP32 circuit and the LEDs are refreshing.
You will always have problems unless all the DC grounds are common. That is basically the #1 thing any tutorial/guide will tell you. I don’t see how it would be hard to do. If you have data coming from the controller to the LED strip all you need to do is add a ground from the controller to the strip as well, seeing your 12v(24v) supply is already connected to the strip. Not sure I would be using a 24v supply if the strip has 12v printed on it. Amazon descriptions are not always correct. Edit: I see they show a pic of a 12v and a 24v version. Make sure what one you have. They do not seem to be one and the same. I would trust the voltage printed on the strip vs the site saying 12/24v. Here is a crude sketch:
