This is a shield/breakout for the Wemos D1 Mini (and D1 Mini Pro) ESP8266 development board, with assembled SMD parts, that makes it easy to control six sets of addressable RGB LEDs, such as WS2811, WS2812 (Adafruit NeoPixels), and APA102 (Adafruit DotStars), in parallel. The Wemos D1 Mini is an excellent mini Wi-Fi development board, based on the ESP8266. I've used it extensively in development of addressable RGB LED art projects, such as my 6.5ft Rainbow Tree, Bloom v2, and Ducenti.

This is a smaller version of my Six output Wemos D1 Mini ESP8266 LED & Level Shifter Shield.

I made this shield because I was hand-wiring this same layout on perma-proto boards, which was time-consuming and unprofessional looking.

The shield includes a surface mounted 74HCT245 level shifter, which is the most well-regarded high speed level shifter I've found. This shifts the 3.3V logic level of the ESP8266 to the 5V expected by addressable RGB LEDs. These projects often work fine without a level shifter, until they don't. A surface mounted 0.1uF decoupling capacitor is also included.

Six digital output pins (D1, D2, D5, D6, D7, D8) are run through the level shifter. These pins support parallel output by the fantastic FastLED library.

The shield also includes six surface mounted data line resistors as recommended when driving LEDs. Duplicate breakouts are included for each of the Wemos D1 mini pins. This shield omits the large 1000uF capacitor included on the larger shield, due to limited space. The large capacitor can be connected across the power and ground connections at the strip.

Specifications

• Size: 1.02 x 1.10 x .063 inch (25.83 x 27.89 x 1.6 mm)
• 2 layer printed circuit board
• FR4 substrate
• Lead free
• Green SMOBC (solder mask over bare copper)
• LeadFree HASL (Hot Air Solder Leveling) RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) Compliant
• Designed in the USA

These parts are required to assemble. They are not included unless you choose the "Fully Assembled" option:

• Wemos D1 Mini and headers
• Pre-Wired JST SM Connectors

Full assembly instructions