Driver Update

The Feather ESP32 V2 has a new serial chip which needs a driver installed before we can install WLED. Head over to our How to Install Drivers for WCH USB to Serial Chips tutorial, and download and install the new driver.

If you have an older Feather ESP32 or QT Py with CP2102 USB-to-Serial bridge, use SiLabs’ driver instead.

Install WLED

These next steps require a Web Serial-compatible browser. As of this writing, that means Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge or Opera “desktop” browsers. Other browsers (Safari, Firefox, Explorer and anything mobile) won’t work.

Visit https://install.wled.me/

Plug your microcontroller into your computer with a known good USB cable. Click "Install" and select the port for your board.

Depending on the USB-to-serial bridge chip on the board, you might see one or two serial ports. On Mac, for instance, there might be both “/dev/cu.usbmodem[number]” and/dev/cu.wchusbserial[number]”. Use the “wchusbserial” one.

After successful installation, enter your WiFi network name and password when prompted. This must be a 2.4 GHz WiFi network; ESP32 does not support 5 GHz networks. If it can’t connect, then as a fallback WLED will create its own 2.4 GHz WiFi access point.

Setup & Preferences

WiFi Setup

It's a good idea to head to WiFi Setup screen and create a good URL so you can control your project from any web-enabled device. I called mine http://jellyfish.local -- this is what I type into any web browser on my WiFi network in order to connect to my jellyfish.

LED Preferences

We need to change just a couple settings in the app to get our lights running correctly. Click the LED Preferences tab and scroll down to Hardware Setup. We have 12 LEDs total, so I changed "Length" to 12. We soldered our data wire to pin 13 (on the Feather) or A0 (aka pin 26) on the QT PY, so make GPIO match the pin number.

Use It

Now you can use any computer or handheld device to control your LEDs. 

Make sure your device is on the same WiFi network as your board. Navigate to your custom URL (jellyfish.local/ for me) in a web browser. You'll see a color picker above a whole bunch of color palette choices.

Choose a color, choose an effect, and watch your lights animate and glow!

You can save your favorite combinations as presets, create playlists, control the speed and intensity of the animations, and lots more. This web app is incredibly intuitive and easy to use.

Head over to the WLED wiki at https://kno.wled.ge/ to delve into all the particulars.

This guide was first published on Sep 28, 2022. It was last updated on Mar 08, 2024.

This page (WLED Software) was last updated on Mar 08, 2024.

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