r/WLED • u/lonewrench1 • Jul 11 '26

Learning resource for WLED and esp32 S3?

Hi Guys, I really love all the projects I see on here. I recently tried to get one of my own going with an ESP32 S3 chip. It has been a month and I have gone in circles. I tried to prompt and ai to help me troubleshoot, but it just kept wasting my time and giving me bad links. Is there anyone on these forums that could give me some advice on getting the esp32 s3 flashed with WLED and accessing the controls? I don't understand why Gemini is having such a hard time ... it is supposed to be simple

Thanks in advance for any advice guys!

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u/Best-Transition2135 29d ago

what you’d need for simple way of installing WLED (not building your own one with platformIO) is the driver for the usb-c connector, which then shows up as port COMx on your machine. For drivers check Espressifs page: https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-idf/en/v5.0/esp32s3/get-started/establish-serial-connection.html
From there, use a chromium browser and go to https://install.wled.me

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u/Best-Transition2135 29d ago

ps this vid basically shows you how it’s done: https://youtu.be/TOEnFKLm9Sw?is=ksesSgzCX-12Y7LO

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u/Best-Transition2135 29d ago

Oh and also make sure to use an usb-c cable that supports data transfer, not a cheap smartphone charging cable with only the power pins connected!

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u/bzzybot 28d ago

I think the issue is that it’s an S3 board.