WLED on esp32-c3-mini

Questions
1

Hello

I got a bunch of ESP32-C3 boards to play around with, and so far they’ve been working pretty well. I’ve been using them with HomeAssistant + ESPhome for general tasks.

I got them from aliexpress: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007884238751.html

So I decided to try WLED on them, but I’m having some issues. It seems WLED does install properly (from https://install.wled.me) but will not connect to my wifi.

  • WLED installation succeeds OK; WLED AP is visible
  • Can connect to wled-ap and then look at settings etc (screeshot at the bottom of the post)

I know the home wi-fi is not a problem, because Ive got 3 other WLED instances (but using different esp32 boards) that are all working fine. My wi-fi access point (unifi) shows no connection attempts or failed association attempts at all.

Also interesting is the esp32 chip on the board gets very hot to the touch. I don’t recall this being the case on my otehr esp32 boards.

So far, I have tried a bunch of versions - v0.14, v0.15, v0.16 alpha and all of them have same issue - wled will not connect to my wi-fi.

Any advice on how to get wled connected to my wi-fi with the esp32-c3-mini would be appreciated.

screenshot
screenshot736×1600 103 KB

2

hi @LD9K please try the old Version as of V14
and as you see in your image it workes at 2FPS in crease this value to 16FPS
then it might be working very well

3

Sorry not having much luck here! I installed v0.14 from the install Install WLED however it still gives me the same issue - will not connect to wi-fi, and gets very hot to touch; but works fine with esphome.

I did find this though, similar issue to what I am having (although for this guy at least it connects and gets hot only periodically disconnecting, but mine will not even go so far0.

Will consider this “resolved” for now, even though it’s not working properly really. Hopefully future release adds better support?

4

I fixed this in 0.16

the “getting hot” is not an issue though, that is just how the small boards are. enable wifi sleep if you want it cooler.

edit:
I have another, unreleased fix that is in testing that might improve connection stability on some C3’s.

5

I actually managed to get this working, and the solution was really simple. It turns out that due to the size of these boards, the “antennas” on these esp32-c3 “supermini” boards has very poor performance.

While playing around with it I started having issues with even esphome based installations having issues connecting to wi-fi. I Tried multilpe boards, same problem. It confused me because I’ve got tens of ESP32s all around my home and have not seen any issues yet. Also, the logs showed that it could see my APs, and relatively good signal strength (-76 dBm - low, but not unworkable) however it still wouldn’t connect.

[21:51:20][D][wifi:497]: Found networks:
[21:51:20][I][wifi:541]: - 'IoT-WiFi' [redacted]▂▄▆█
[21:51:20][D][wifi:542]:     Channel: 6
[21:51:20][D][wifi:543]:     RSSI: -76 dB
[21:51:20][I][wifi:541]: - 'IoT-WiFi' [redacted]▂▄▆█
[21:51:20][D][wifi:542]:     Channel: 1
[21:51:20][D][wifi:543]:     RSSI: -81 dB
[21:51:20][D][wifi:546]: - [redacted] [redacted]▂▄▆█
[21:51:20][D][wifi:546]: - [redacted] [redacted]▂▄▆█
[21:51:20][D][wifi:546]: - [redacted] [redacted]▂▄▆█
[21:51:20][I][wifi:313]: WiFi Connecting to 'IoT-WiFi'...
[21:51:21][W][wifi_esp32:569][arduino_events]: Event: Disconnected ssid='IoT-WiFi' bssid=[redacted] reason='Auth Expired'
[21:51:21][W][wifi:653]: Error while connecting to network.
[21:51:21][D][wifi:697]: Retrying with hidden networks...
[21:51:21][I][wifi:313]: WiFi Connecting to 'IoT-WiFi'...
[21:51:22][W][wifi_esp32:569][arduino_events]: Event: Disconnected ssid='IoT-WiFi' bssid=[redacted] reason='Auth Expired'
[21:51:22][W][wifi:653]: Error while connecting to network.
[21:51:22][D][wifi:697]: Retrying with hidden networks...

Thanks for the assistance! I got 0.14 running on it, then updated to 0.15 - both work great.