ESP8266 Community Forum

Hey all, I am brand new to ESP8266 boards (or any other board similar etc).

I am doing a WLED project, super simple. I normally just buy the premade kits but wanted to try something new based on some YouTube videos.

I am doing a simple LED run with WS2812s (the higher density ones, 300 diodes on the 16 ft spool) and using WLED flashed to the ESP8266, then using USB power using a 5v 2A phone charger (tried a few diff methods thinking maybe that was causing the issue)

I bought 4 boards on Amazon, obviously they are a cheap brand but someone recommended them. They were called HitLego.

Two of them were DOA and wouldn't even power on, the other two worked long enough to get WLED on them. One of them failed a few mins later when I unplugged them to move them to the new location..the board when was dead completely. The last one worked and was running fine for 30 mins or so then randomly just shut off and then was completely dead.

I had the limiter set to 1500mA on the last two with a 2A plug - running 104 LEDs (strip cut to 104).

I just got a new brand board in called KeyYees and got it up and running immediately. I used a new phone charger and I set them to 2000mA then 1500mA and that caused no issues - however i noticed the microusb port on the board is REALLY hot..like too hot to touch. I am trying to figure out what I am doing wrong or if anything - and how to fix it.

I am going to leave this one running at 850mA for an hour or so and see if it keeps going, then maybe bump it to 1500mA and let it run another hour and see what happens.

Any advise to this super frustrated newbie would be super helpful.

I am extremely sorry to hear about your bitter experience. Personally, I do not consider ama... alli... etc. a good source of electronics components. Because nobody takes any responsibility if the goods are faulty. I prefer buying from sparkfun, seedstudio, waveshare etc. Yes, their products may be expensive, but their products are QC passed. And they have their own warranty policies. At least you know, where to give complain if anything is not working as expected.

Waveshare has this NodeMCU in stock now: https://www.waveshare.com/nodemcu.htm

For further reference regarding which board to choose for what purpose, this write-up may help you:

https://www.theengineeringprojects.com/ ... jects.html

Amazon will take returns or replace items. All my ESPs, a bunch of sensors, and programmer are from there, but I've had no problems so far (knock on wood). If you contact the seller it's entirely likely they will just send out replacements.

How are you connecting power to the LED strip?

It is best to do this separately rather than going through the board and powering it from one of the board connectors. This avoids passing the potentially quite high LED current through the micro connector and through board traces.