I’m curious if there is a workaround, or perhaps expanded memory/different esp32 I could use. I have made a battery powered portable LED spool of 12v “fairy” lights. There are 600 led spanning about 30 meters. I have already figured out my current limitations, protection, and other power limitations etc. My problem is that with so many LEDs, I find that I cannot have very many presets due to memory limitations. I can only get to about 16 presets (8 at max brightness the spool can handle, and the same 8 at a “power save” brightness). Would it be more prudent to add a potentiometer for brightness control, and does this brightness apply globally over all of my presets? That way I could have 16 different presets, and just adjust the brightness to my power consumption needs. Or perhaps there is a way to add an SD card, or a newer supported esp32 with more memory for more presets?
Welcome @shaolinsolidus56.
So, I’m pretty new to this myself and I might be misinterpreting what you’re saying, but I’m not sure that the number of LEDs has anything to do with the number of presets available. I have installations with many more LEDs than 600 and have dozens of presets.
Let’s look at a couple of things:
Do you have sufficient power along the way? You may have 12V at the 1st LED and at the injection points, but can you measure 12V further away? If you set the effect to solid, the palette to white and the brightness to 16, do all the LEDs light up? When you raise the brightness, do any LEDs go out, get dimmer than the rest, change color, or flicker?
What I’ve read it that the potentiometer will work parallel to the slider in the UI, but will take precedence, so it wouldn’t make a difference.
I don’t think memory is an issue unless you have user mods that are consuming it, but using an SD card as “extra” memory would need to be built into the app and would be an issue long term as SD cards deteriorate the more write operations are performed.
Again, I’m far from an expert, so take it with a grain of salt, and maybe someone with more knowledge will chime in.
Good luck!
Oh I’ve definitely had to do some tom foolery to get it to be somewhat stable throughout the strip. Switching to 12v definitely helped, but the current is quite limited to have it actual full brightness. They are the small PVC coated “fairy” lights, and power injection just isn’t really an option, unless I were to go with the 4 wire lead ones and use that as my power injection wire, only injecting the + which could still pose some issues. No flicker, no other issues, workes quite well for camping. I’m running 6 18650’s with a 12v boost converter to keep it at a steady 12v, and a BMS with a balancing board. All 3D printed with massive bearings for easy roll out of the led string.
That may work for me, as what I’ve done is 8 duplicate presets, each at a different brightness, running on “high power” and “low power” playlists depending on my lighting needs. If the potentiometer will just have a set UI brightness carried over to all of the presets in the playlist, that would solve my issue.
However, looking into the forums some more, it is possible I have incorrectly flashed the esp32, as I have used esphomeflasher, and not esptool, which does not get rid of the bootloader, and won’t partition correctly? I’m probably mistaken on this, but worth looking into
As far as the pot goes, you can look at this to get that set up.
Macros - WLED Project
The presets have the brightness set, so if you save for example “Bouncing Balls” at bri 64 to “BB1” and then “Bouncing Balls” at bri 128 to “BB2” and then “Bouncing Balls” at bri 255 to “BB3”, each will have the same effect and palette, but change the brightness to the level it was saved at.
number of leds has nothing to do with number of presets.
also you should be able to save way more than 12 presets, I have an LED matrix with 1200 pixels and can save more, not sure why you would not be able to do so, there is plenty of memory reserved for presets (I think it should hold at least 50 but I could be wrong).
that said: there are ESP32 versions with more flash memory, they are supported. SD card is not (maybe there is a usermod but not sure).
you do not need to save each preset twice: you can just remove the brightness setting (manually delete it from the code text) from a preset, then it will not change the set brightness when activated. you can have a preset that just changes brightness, and you can make a preset that toggles between different brightness levels.
It’s possible I was just flashing it wrong. I’ve made sure to get the 16mb esp32’s I was reading that if it is flashed with ESPhome, there can be issues with memory allocation, and I’m pretty sure I was flashing the 16mb wled 
. Good to know that you have a 1200 led setup that you have plenty of presets on. I thought I read somewhere that the number of LED’s impacts memory, as you are addressing more, therefore it takes up more space 
But I think I’ll start with making sure that I have flashed properly, and go from there.
Just 2nd’ng the comment that LED #'s do NOT affect preset limits.
The # of LEDs will affect the available RAM used for effects and normal operations.
You’ll see the used/avail counts on the Config->LED Preferences page.
The presets are saved in the File System, which is a predefined area of the ESP flash memory.
Completely different from the operating RAM/Stack.
You’re completely correct, a good flash of your ESP is essential to getting things going 
Just another FYI, I’m running 2048 5v LEDs with 25 presets on 80 amp power supply and is very stable with I Beleave it was the second release of 15. Just another it’s bit…
So, in conclusion, I’m dumb. I’ve been using ESPhome flasher for all of my esp’s, and this is apparently the very wrong way to do it. I checked my info tab on all of my falshed esp’s and was showing 64kb available. I recently used the web flasher, and now have 960kb available. So, problem solved, I’m just a silly goose 🪿