As far as I understand, the IR sensor for the remote control is connected to GPIO5 on the SP511E, but the LED strip is connected to GPIO 3. GPIO 3 causes problems if more than 255 LEDs are addressed. Then it should be possible to simply cut off the IR sensor and connect the coloured wire to the data wire of the LED strip. Then you would have to configure WLED so that the LED strip is controlled via GPIO5.
Am I missing something here?
It’s been a while since I dug into the guts of the SP511E’s, but as I recall there’s some other electronics between the IR sensor and GPIO5 (I could be wrong).
If you haven’t found it, there’s a few threads on modding the SP511E’s. Some others as well.
FWIW I have a dozen or so of those devices in various projects as they’re cheap and pretty versatile for small projects, but you can’t beat an ESP32 for the “real deal” MCU.