What's your favorite analog / PWM LED controller driver?

I’ve has an H801 for a long time but it looks like those are less readily available now. Ideally I’d like to find something that’s 5 channel and driven by an ESP32.

So, what’s your favorite?

I start with the opposite - just to hang the bar low for other suggestions :wink:

With only 1 channel and a esp8266 my go-to pwm boards are this sinilink ones :point_down:

Wide range input from somewhere around 4V up to 36V. Back in the day I got these ones for $3.50 shipped. :money_with_wings:

Also suggested by the @system :muscle:

Also a more compact version with usb connectors and case exists of that device :point_down:

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For some reason 4 channel seems to be the magic number unless you make your own. Single, double, or 4 channel are all I can ever find. I replaced my landscape lighting controller and ended up just stacking 4 channel boards together for a total of 12 channels. I’m kind of glad I did it this way now as it saved a lot of space over a long flat board with 22 channels. Most 4 channel boards come with mount holes, you just screw in stand offs between them and stack as many as you need.

What four channel boards did you end up using?

Any issues with flicker due to the soft PWM on these?

Not when the brightness is set to a static value. The “process” of dimming is a little more rough compared to a esp32 with hardware based PWM. Doing like a ~5 seconds dim-in or dim-out sometimes results in a very short but visible “hick-up” - so it stops for a tiny fraction before it continues it’s way. :pinching_hand:

If I’m not mistaken that can happen when some wifi transmission happens. :signal_strength:

As I don’t dimm around like crazy but have 99.9% of the time a static brightness it doesn’t bother me at all :star2:

It’s also possible to build your own device very easily (and cheap) by using such blue break out boards the @system suggests :point_down:

So 5 of this boards together with a esp32 and you got 5 channels :tada: