Brandon Rasmussen's Eight-Port LED Controller Provides Data and Power for Hundreds of Pixels

Maker Brandon Rasmussen has put together a handy high-performance board for anyone looking to drive 12V LED strings: a full eight-port controller board with integrated power distribution.

"I wanted a board that could control LED lights during high frame rate (40 FPS) sequenced light shows as well as run WLED to control the lights during other times of the year," Rasmussen explains of the problem the board attempts to solve.

"My Wi-Fi-only controllers could not handle high frame rates for sequenced light shows wirelessly. Other higher end controllers had their own proprietary software that worked for sequenced light shows, but didn't run WLED natively."

The solution: an eight-port controller board, which ditches Wi-Fi in favor of wired Ethernet using an Espressif ESP32 to control WS2812, WS2811, WS2815 and compatible LED strips. A Wireless Tag WT32-ETH01 provides the microcontroller, connected to a level-shifter up to 5V for the LEDs' control signals.

Where the design goes above and beyond its competitors is the inclusion of full 12V power distribution — with a 5V variant due in the future, its creator says — offering easy wiring using Phoenix connectors and doing away with the need to wire up a separate power supply. Each port, Rasmussen says, has been tested up to five amps — providing the power supply to the control board itself is beefy enough, of course.

According to Rasmussen's testing, the control board can handle a full 40 frames per second at 500 LED pixels per pin — stretching to 600 pixels per pin at a push — dropping down to 20 frames per second for up to 800 pixels per pin.

The boards are now available to buy on Rasmussen's Wasatch Pixels Tindie store, at $125; the software is handled by Christian Schwinne's WLED project, available on GitHub under the permissive MIT license.