Wemos D1 Mini ESP8266 LED & Level Shifter Shield Enclosure & Lid

Case for Wemos D1 Mini ESP8266 LED & Level Shifter Shield

This is a case for the Wemos D1 Mini ESP8266 LED & Level Shifter Shield, which makes it easy to control addressable RGB LEDs such as WS2811, WS2812 (Adafruit NeoPixels), SK6812, APA102 (Adafruit DotStars), and SK9822. 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.

I used M3 socket cap screws to mount the PCB to the enclosure, and to attach the lid. I used 4mm or 6mm long ones, but you could use longer ones if you want to mount the enclosure to something.

I also included holes in the enclosure for mounting to a pole or other objects with zip ties.

The shield includes a 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.

Four digital output pins (D5 - D8) are run through the level shifter. These pins support parallel output by the fantastic FastLED library.

The shield also includes places for data line resistors and a large 1000uF capacitor as recommended when driving LEDs, especially when powering the microcontroller from the same power supply as a large number of LEDs. Duplicate breakouts are included for each of the Wemos D1 mini pins. The shield also includes a spot for easily adding an IR receiver.