This is the beginnings of a project to build a barebones, low-cost, ESP32-based board to control addressable LEDs.
Boards are now available for purchase if that's your thing.
Interactive Bill-of-Materials is available here if you're feeling nerdy.
Since early-November 2021, I've invested about 60 hours designing my addressable LED development board. I ordered the initial v0.1 prototype from JLC PCB in late November and as soon as the order was submitted, I immediately went to work on refining the idea for v0.2.
That first batch landed on my doorstep around the first week of December, and that's when I quickly realized I had a LOT to learn about power management. The low dropout voltage regulators (LDOs) I chose to get 5v and 3.3v from 12v on that first design were a very bad choice. I went back to work - researching designs and talking with people smarter than me and landed on implementing a buck converter design. This meant adding a lot of additional components. The Bill of Materials (BOM) on v0.1 was around 12 components and a minimalistic buck converter circuit was going to add about that same number of parts. A goal from the very beginning of my endeavor was to make this board super low-cost. I studied a few reference designs and every time I sat down to draw the schematic and place the parts on the PCB, I would discover there was a chip shortage or the buck converter chip alone was $2-3 each. More research.
After a few cycles of this, I ran across the XLSEMI XL1509 - less than $0.30 per chip and only required four additional external components (input cap, inductor, schottky diode and output cap). Within a few hours, LEDeez v0.3 was done. The buck converter circuit replaced the original 12->5 LDO and I also removed the 12->3.3 LDO and replaced it with a more common AMS1117-3.3.
This is where we are today. A list of hopes and dreams for future revisions can be found below and if you're interested in pitching in, feel free to Buy Me a Coffee or three.
2022-02-15: This current BOM is based on 0.3 and needs updated for a few modified components in v1.0 All components sourced from JLCPCB and/or LCSC
| Name | Designator | Quantity | Manufacturer Part | Manufacturer | LCSC Part # |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TS-1101-C-W | SW1 | 1 | TS-1101-C-W | XKB Connectivity | C318938 |
| 470uF | CIN | 1 | VEJ471M1ETR-1010 | LELON | C176672 |
| SN74AHCT125DR | U5 | 1 | SN74AHCT125DR | TI | C7xxx |
| ESP32-WROOM-32E(16MB) | U3 | 1 | ESP32-WROOM-32E(16MB) | Espressif Systems | Cxxxxx |
| PA001-2P | CN1,CN2,CN3,CN4 | 4 | PA001-2P | HIWA | C128027 |
| HDR-M-2.54_1x8 | J1 | 1 | C190820 | ||
| HDR-M-2.54_2x6 | J2 | 1 | C124388 | ||
| HDR-M-2.54_1x2 | J3 | 1 | C124375 | ||
| XL1509-5.0E1 | U1 | 1 | XL1509-5.0E1 | XLSEMI | C61063 |
| 220uF | COUT | 1 | ERZ1HM181F16OT | AISHI | C10xxxx |
| 5.1 | R3 | 1 | 0805W8F510KT5E | UniOhm | C17724 |
| 1uF | C1 | 1 | CL05A105KA5NQNC | SAMSUNG | C52923 |
| SS32_C65002 | D1 | 1 | SS32 | MDD | C65002 |
| 68uH | L1 | 1 | SMMS1040-680MT | ShunXiang Connaught Elec | C286354 |
| AMS1117-3.3 | U4 | 1 | AMS1117-3.3 | AMS | C6186 |
| AC0805FR-7W51RL | R1,R2 | 2 | AC0805FR-7W51RL | YAGEO | C727996 |
| 10uF | C2 | 1 | CA45-B-25V-10uF-K | CEC | C128259 |
PCB Revision v1.0 as of 2022-02-15
*Build IO shield (digital mic, relay for power output, status ws2811 pixel)