Why does my LED strip still glow?

Hi all
I need help understanding something, it’s probably pretty rudimentary. I’ve been playing around with a cheap LED strip, no fancy addressable chip or anything, and a D1 mini. 12V+ is connected to LED+, 12V GND is shared with D1 mini GND and LED strip GND connected to D1 mini pin 6. I use below code on the D1.

light:
  - platform: monochromatic
    name: "Mono Lights"
    output: output_component10
   
output:
  - platform: esp8266_pwm
    id: output_component10
    pin: D6
    inverted: true
    max_power: 100%

I can adjust the brightness of the LED strip in HA but even when I turn off the light switch in HA there is still a faint glow from the LED strip. How come?

Thank you for your patience :slight_smile:
/Fredrik

Add to the output

zero_means_zero: true

No luck. Even with zero_means_zero there is a faint glow. I’m really a curious layman at electronics but my guess is the D1 pin isn’t completely “open” when HA sends “off” to the D1. I’ve done some more searching and a few of the DIYs out there mention resistors and/or mosfets.

/Fredrik

You are doing that without a transistor?
I thought that this was needed:

Don’t try to connect the pins directly to your everyday microcontroller, they will burn out and/or not work.

1 Like

Well I’d say that’s it, I failed to realize you were running 12v through a 5v board. The link @mcarty posted is what you need.

Hi all
Thank you for the input. I got myself a Mosfet and that made my LED strip work as intended.

/Fredrik