D1-Mini-Power-Flexible-Lighting-Shield

Here are the specs of the final shield:

• 6-24V voltage regulator at up to 3A
• 3 pwm channels (up to 2.5A) for controlling RGB led strings
• 1 channel with WS2812B ‘driver’
• 1 other breakout pin
• Voltage divider on board for battery monitoring and switching
• Stackable! You can use more than one lighting board per D1 Mini
• Serial pins unused should you need to wire to an array of other microcontrollers.
• Configurable. Only populate the areas you need on the board for the required functionality

Testing confirms the following:

• Power supply good to 2.5A continuous at 30C
• Drives a string of 120 WS2812B at 80% brightness
• PWM channels (current sink) good for 2.5A per channel
• McLighting, Tasmota compatible
• PWM and WS2812B drivers work separately or concurrently

Getting Started

• The board is configurable. You only need to populate the areas required to meet your needs.

• If you don't need to monitor a voltage, omit R12 and R13

• If you don't need to PWM RGB led strings you can omit Q1-3 and R5-10

• If you don't need to drive the WS2812B, then you can omit LED1 and D1

• If you don't want to drive output D1 then omit R13

Input pins

• Connect the power supply (6-24V) to the connections marked +12v and GND
• The ADC input is connected to the +12v pin for monitoring if required. The suggested values are R11, 20k and R12, 5K. This will allow an input of up to 16V to be measured.

Output Pins

• +5v and GND is supplied at JP4 - you can use it to supply any peripherals you like, including lighting. It also supplies the 5V pin of the D1 Mini.
• PWM0 is an output, via R13 from D1 (GPIO 5 (D1))
• WS is the WS2812B driver pin, via LED1. This is the pin you'll add to the Adafruit Neopixel or Mclighting code.
• L0, L1 and L2 are designed to control RGB LED strings. (If you decide to use it for other purposes such as driving a small motor, at least a flyback diode will be required). You can either hook up one RGB string (up to 2.5-3A worth) using all 3 channels or one monochrome strip to each channel.

Firmware

• For WS2812B, I have used Mclighting. - It only needs one pin declared (LED_PIN 4 (D2))

• For PWM, I usually write my own code or sometimes use Tasmota.

    L0 - 14 (D5)
    L1 - 12 (D6)
    L2 - 13 (D7)
  

Notes

• WS2812B strings will benefit from a large capacitor across the power terminals (not mandatory but is said to improve their lifespan)
• You can demand a lot of power from the power supply and potentially overload it. It will tell you its not happy by getting hot :) Best to limit the amount of power you can draw in your firmware.

Boards and Components

• I may have boards and or components available from time to time. Please contact me with a comment on Here