Hey y’all! I fix LED video walls for a living. Because of this, I have lots of SMD LEDs at my disposal. Currently, I am trying to correctly wire an addressable SMD 2121 RGB to a D1 Mini.
I have been working with D1s/WLED/WS2812Bs for 3-4 years, so I’m pretty familiar with that config, however I don’t know how to wire a SMD LED with a pinout such as these. They are 4-pin, with one power in, and the other 3 are separate R, G, B pins.
I have a feeling that this is mainly a WLED settings config situation, but since there is no topic on this, I thought I’d make one. Pin-out of diode is below.
Those are not addressable LEDs (in our nomeclature), they’re 3 common anode LEDs in one package.
Try the Analog LED wiring examples in the KB: Getting started.
You need to choose PWM RGB in the LED Preferences config and pick 3 GPIOs to drive the MOSFETs for each channel
What can be done with these types of devices and what WLED can do with these are 2 very different questions.
A commercial design can make use of a dedicated matrix driver that will likely be far faster, have far more individual pixel control and be more power efficient as well.
Glad you’re up and running.
Be forwarned, you’re not likely to be able to run more than 1 of those in parallel as the ESP32 GPIOs max out at a few 10’s of mA. That’s usually what one of those LEDs can draw.
Thus the need for a MOSFET driver to handle the load…
Duly noted. I am happy to have proof of concept with these diodes, and will likely use it for something in the future.
For the wearable project I have planned, I will probably switch them out for 4-pin 2020 nano ws2812b’s instead to make things easier for myself. They have a 12mA constant draw as well. I probably won’t use more than 10 pixels at a time. Would you advise the use of MOSFETs with these as well?
The NeoPixel Nano’s are addressable LEDs, so they each manage their own power draw. You just put them in parallel across a 5V supply, daisy chain their Data Outs to Data Ins, and feed your MCU data to the Data In of the 1st LED. No MOSFETs required but possibly a levelshifter, depending on their specs.
Their maximum power draw will be similar to the 2121’s, but because you can turn each pixel on or off independently, their average power can be much lower.
