ESP8266 DMX 2-Universe Breakout

What is it?

This is a 2-universe DMX decoder shield and power supply for the ESP8266 NodeMCU Board.

Why did you make it?

I have a lot of DMX lighting that I would like to run but without wires and using open-source hardware and tools. This board works for DMX lighting strands (raw wires) and DMX hosts with 3 pin connectors. It takes 5-24 volts as VIN and regulates that power to run the NodeMCU and the DMX translation chips.

What makes it special?

It replaces typical Arduino DMX shields for one that is integrated with the NodeMCU ESP8266 Dev Board. It also integrates a 5v power supply reducing the number of external components. Since this board is wireless and relatively inexpensive, the cost and complexity of isolating the output from the low-voltage side of the board did not make sense.

The board has broken out unused pins from the NodeMCU allowing for easily adding in extra LED pixels, sensors, etc. It has 2 indicator LEDs as well allowing easy status updates for debugging or connection updates, etc.

The board can be powered from:

1. The screw terminals on the side (input or output) (useful when using DMX light strips)
2. The USB on the NodeMCU board (useful if you have a micro-usb charger)
3. The barrel jack (for any 5-24v barrel jack power, powers LED strips as well).

What you’re getting

This product is partially assembled:

A NodeMCUv2 development board is not included but can be easily found.

Connectors for the DMX 3 channel sockets are not attached to the board when ordered, along with 4 pin terminal strips and the headers for the ESP8266.

If you want these components to be soldered on the board including a pre-programmed NodeMCU for out-of-the-box usage, you will receive a working board with the WLED firmware (easy WiFi user interface and many features) out of the box. The customized WLED firmware (images available on the Github repo) does not support 2 DMX universes, but adding support for 2 DMX universes or using another NodeMCU DMX project to support this functionality should be fairly straight forward.

Prebuilt Firmware Download + Documentation

Board Source Files