Control Individual Addressable LED Strips with LedBox V2
Stanley Ondrus' tiny, ESP32-based board can drive LED strips like the WS2812 and SK6812.
We've seen plenty of development boards like Arduino able to control individual addressable LEDs, making it possible to adjust the brightness and color as well as produce complex effects. Stanley Ondrus, a Slovak developer living in Denmark, however, has demonstrated an ESP32-based tiny form factor board, dubbed LedBox V2, that can be used to drive three and four-wire addressable LED strips like the WS2812 and SK6812.
"It is based on a powerful ESP32 microcontroller with integrated Wi-Fi, dual-mode Bluetooth, and enough processing power to perform real-time digital signal processing," says the developer. This ESP-based module gets a 38kHz IR receiver for infrared RC systems.
With a dedicated step-down converter, the LedBox V2 is capable of supporting the use of both 5V and 12V LED strips. "It contains a digital MEMS microphone, side button, 32kHz IR receiver, 10A safety resettable fuse, 1000µF buffer capacitor, 3.3V/5V level converter for both data and clock lines, together with an impedance matching resistor," Ondrus notes. These components are all housed inside a small (54x32x18mm) 3D-printable enclosure.
The default firmware is compatible with WLED and Sound Reactive WLED firmware for Wi-Fi control. LedBox V2 does not stop here, as it can also control the popular WS2812 LEDs, often used on the development boards.
Being an open source developed project, all the files are available to download. Although, as of publishing, the link to the GitHub repository is not yet provided. More information on the LedBox V2 and its schematic can be found on the official website.