IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT THE POWER REQUIREMENTS FOR THE LEDS/ESP8266: It was brought to my attention that I forgot to mention the importance of not overloading your esp8266 power thru the Vin pin thru your LED wire. The controller is still rather small to run all the current through the one pin. Therefore, I didn’t mention it specifically in the video but in your LED settings menu, when enabling current limiter, set your current limit to 500ma (no more than 1A). For the amount of LED’s needed for this project, that should be safe limits for the controller and the Vin pin as I’ve run my lights with that setting for 7 months with no issues. Also I reccomend setting the brightness of your lights not more than 50% brightness to help power draw as well. I apologize for not mentioning this in the video but appreciate those willing to educate me and remind me of these things.
Awesome project and love the idea! So cool taking things that are meant for something else and using it in a new way! Keep up the good work buddy! Like you, I've never had any issues doing small projects this way (powering everything via the micro USB) but others have mentioned it might draw too much power so great advice!
I'd never realized you were powering the whole strip via the USB port and Vin pin. Must have missed that stream. It's been working for a long time, but I'd be careful of adding more than a few LEDs using that method. The strips really should get a direct connection to the PSU (+) & (-) wires. If my math is right (55 LEDs, 20mA per color, 3 colors), that's 3.3A at full white. Way more than the ESP Vin/USB path will be happy passing for long. Patterns won't draw that much, but something to consider for those building the project. Correct me if I missed something of course.
Thank you for bringing that to my attention. I agree that is a lot powering thru the controller. Thankfully with the WLED software, the current limiter can help prevent over current. I also have the limiter only set to 500ma (which WLED recommends 1A or less when running power thru the Vin pin). I also run the lights no more than 50% brightness. I will update the pinned comment with these requirements as I didn’t specifically mention this in the video.
IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT THE POWER REQUIREMENTS FOR THE LEDS/ESP8266:
It was brought to my attention that I forgot to mention the importance of not overloading your esp8266 power thru the Vin pin thru your LED wire. The controller is still rather small to run all the current through the one pin. Therefore, I didn’t mention it specifically in the video but in your LED settings menu, when enabling current limiter, set your current limit to 500ma (no more than 1A). For the amount of LED’s needed for this project, that should be safe limits for the controller and the Vin pin as I’ve run my lights with that setting for 7 months with no issues. Also I reccomend setting the brightness of your lights not more than 50% brightness to help power draw as well. I apologize for not mentioning this in the video but appreciate those willing to educate me and remind me of these things.
Awesome project and love the idea! So cool taking things that are meant for something else and using it in a new way! Keep up the good work buddy! Like you, I've never had any issues doing small projects this way (powering everything via the micro USB) but others have mentioned it might draw too much power so great advice!
Thank you so much for the kinds words! And Thank YOU for all of your awesome content that got me inspired to create this to begin with!
That is so cool! Well done bud!
Thank you sir! This was a fun one to make!
Janooo. This is just sooo great!
Thanks for watching!
I'd never realized you were powering the whole strip via the USB port and Vin pin. Must have missed that stream. It's been working for a long time, but I'd be careful of adding more than a few LEDs using that method. The strips really should get a direct connection to the PSU (+) & (-) wires. If my math is right (55 LEDs, 20mA per color, 3 colors), that's 3.3A at full white. Way more than the ESP Vin/USB path will be happy passing for long. Patterns won't draw that much, but something to consider for those building the project.
Correct me if I missed something of course.
Thank you for bringing that to my attention. I agree that is a lot powering thru the controller. Thankfully with the WLED software, the current limiter can help prevent over current. I also have the limiter only set to 500ma (which WLED recommends 1A or less when running power thru the Vin pin). I also run the lights no more than 50% brightness.
I will update the pinned comment with these requirements as I didn’t specifically mention this in the video.