ESP8266 Community Forum

- Thu May 07, 2015 5:31 am #16781 Hey guys,

For a personal project I designed a super tiny Wifi dimmer module, based on the ESP8266. It doesn't need any arduinos or rasp pis to work, just the ESP.



This is an attempt to make a module with correct pulldown/ups that minimizes wasted power consumption, all in a 2x3cm package. Its height is incredibly small too, causing it to be integrable almost anywhere. Just plug 12V and GND into the IN terminal, hook your LED strip up to the OUT terminal, and enjoy having your lighting dimmable from any device.

The hardware design, explanation, and parts list are open sourced on GitHub: https://github.com/tjclement/esp-dimmer-hardware.

I'm hoping to share the software soon as well. In the mean time, since this is essentially a breakout of the bare ESP chip, any other firmware will work just fine as well. The pin used for PWM dimming is GPIO13, for reference.

I'm very interested in your thoughts, and if you have any improvement suggestions please send over a pull request so we can integrate the awesomeness!

- Fri May 15, 2015 2:40 pm #17497 The PCBs just arrived from China! The screw terminal blocks haven't come in yet, so I soldered the wires directly to the board to check out this module:



I wrote up an assembly walkthrough with pictures on the project's Hackaday page: https://hackaday.io/project/5646/instructions

- Fri May 15, 2015 4:10 pm #17506 Looks great.

And thanks for showing me an XM1584, i'd not noticed that before.

- Sat May 16, 2015 1:26 am #17526 Very nice, thank you for sharing! That is a very good idea, to use both PCB sides like that.
Thank you for showing me this family of MOSFET, which is a key component here. The low Rds_on means it can handle a lot of current in an SOT (no need for a bulky TO-220). Have you tested approximately how much current it can run? Looking at the figures, I would assume a full 5 m LED strip would be ok, for instance. And switched fully on directly by the ESP.
It looks like you intend to use some kind of edge connector on the PCB for reprogramming if needed? Or will you solder?