GLEDOPTO WLED LED Light Strip Controller 5-24V WiFi APP Control Over 100 Dynamic Lighting Modes DIY 800 IC for RGB RGBW WS2812B WS2811 SK6812 TM1814 WS2813 WS2815 No Need Hub

The hardware is fine, it works. WLED on the other hand is outstanding. WLED is an open source project which develops ESP firmware for LED controllers. Made the mistake of only ordering one but hopefully more become available.Most of this really can apply to any controller running WLED. The controller hardware itself doesn't stand out much.Pros:- Preflashed with WLED. I've been meaning to try WLED after getting bored of the Zigbee Home Assistant LED setup I have but flashing the firmware is more of a project than I have time for and up till this I've only ever seen preflashed WLED controllers on tindie or other wierd small retailers that I feel a little iffy about.-WLED firmware is probably better than Phillips Hue in my opinion. You get way more control of the device to get as fancy as you feel like.- Local control, no phoning home to cloud services (although you should be segmenting your IOT stuff anyway)- WLED is an actively developed open source project (at the time of writing) so you should be able to get frequent updates (compared to most of the abandonware in the IOT market).Cons:- With great power comes great responsibility. WLED is great and just getting LEDs to light up is fairly intuitive but all the knobs it exposes really makes it a better fit for home-{assistant,lab} nerds that are into stuff like read documentation and submitting PRs and discussing the wife/partner/family/etc-approval-factor of various intergrations on forums.Final note:WLED has a permissive open source license (MIT I believe), so anyone can use it for anything but it'd kind of be a disappointment (but not a shocker) to find out that Gledopto is not making upstream contributions. If they aren't maybe consider doing this?

Initially it setup and worked, but after about 10 minutes, it started dropping connection every time I tried to click any button on the ui. It did this on the app and also in the browser on PC.Then it wouldn't connect at all to wifi. So its useless now. Only the button on it works. So its very limited and useless for what I wanted. Since this particular model doesn't have the UART, there is no way to reflash the firmware without going through the interface, which mine won't do.The listing also doesn't tell you this is the ESP8266 chip, except buried in tiny text near the bottom of the listing. For those who don't know, that is the worst chipset for wled. ESP32 based boards have alot more support and flexibility.I did attempt to use their built in reset, holding the button for 10 seconds. After that it displays its own wifi, but no device can connect and its still connected to my home wifi, which it shouldn't be when you reset it, so its not resetting fully. Definite issue with the board/firmware.I can not recommend this item at all, its trash. I don't even want to return it for fear that they will re-pack it and send it to someone else, since it is cosmetically in perfect condition.

Work perfectly fine with the pre-installed software that it came with. Being the genius that I am I decided to do the over-the-air update and didn't pay attention to the file and just chose the newest one which I'm certain is not compatible with the chip inside lol. I should have read the reviews on here or I would have known that. Not sure I have the skill to do any kind of soldering since it does not have a USB port to reflash. It's fine I have a few more controllers I was just trying this one out and it seemed to work good before I fiddled with it.

The WiFi connection has been reliable. It also responds quickly in home assistant.

Wires kept pulling out. Cheap assembly of components

The media could not be loaded. Great controller in neat, clean, and easy to use package out of the box. This uses the WLED open source LED project code for incredible animations with very powerful controls including current limiting based on your power supply so you don't overdrive it and burn it out with too many LED's (for safety). In the pictures attached you can see the actual ESP8266 module used inside the neat and clean packaging that makes this a no brainer when you want to control these addressable LED's. Since this uses open-source code, the ESP module can easily be updated over the air (OTA) once you connect to it. Just make sure you do manual update and select the correct BIN file (WLED_XXXXXX_ESP02.bin) file which is for the 2M ESP8266 module this unit comes with. Be aware this does NOT have come with USB connector for firmware updates or code changes, so if you brick it, you'd have to do a bit of surgery to connect into the serial inputs on the chip to reload everything from scratch again, but OTA with the file above works perfectly, so there should not be a need for that USB connection.Also, be aware the wire block connectors may look like they use a flat screwdriver type screw, but they are just spring loaded terminals = DON'T TRY TO TURN THEM, just press them when inserting the wires.GLEDOPTO has a winner here with their super clean and easy to use implementation of the ESP8266 2M chip plus all the other necessary electronics, wire blocks + barrel connector options, and voltage regulation to use readily available 5-12V power supplies and your favorite addressable LED strip or matrix. It's literally plug and play.If you're on the fence between other controllers and this one and you don't need music sensors or IR remote (although these things could be soldered into to this one too) and you're looking for an easy to use unit, get this 100% recommended! Don't be intimidated by all the technical info above. Just putting it all here for those that can benefit from it if they choose to go a bit further with WLED.Enjoy!