Odd LED strip behaviour with esp32

ESPHome
1

I Have the following setup on a wemos d1 mini esp32, but toggling the light switch on/off just causes the leds to flicker. anyone experienced this?

example


esp32:
  board: wemos_d1_mini32

light:
  - platform: neopixelbus
    id: LedLights
    type: GRBW
    variant: SK6812
    pin: GPIO16
    num_leds: 7
    internal: False
    name: "Led Bot LEDs"
2

turned out, I had the TX/RX backwards on the step up board