This project was born to simplfy some led installations at home, fitting all the things usually you need to drive strips in one small board. Nowadays Type-C chargers are quite cheap and they can provide a lot of power with different voltages, so taking advantage of it converting the input to a stable 5V or 12V output could be really useful in many cases.

This project went through different revisions when I found that also other people could have been helped with their setup with this board, and I finally named it YULC (Yes, a USB Type-C LED Controller)

YULC is now a fully-featured controller board perfect for modern lighting projects. It features extensive protection to ensure safety for both the charger and the LEDs and thanks to its built-in buck regulator, it can provide enough power to feed very power-hungry lighting setups.

At the heart of this new board is a powerful ESP32-S3, which you can program over the built-in USB Type-C port. This means that complex effects are easily achieved without adding other computing power. YULC empowers you to unlock a world of creative lighting possibilities—it’s the perfect companion for bringing your ideas to life without messy wiring or major compromises.

Dual Power Inputs

YULC provides two ways to feed your LED creations. Choose from the USB Type-C port supporting the Power Delivery 3.0 protocol (5 V, 9 V, 12 V, 15 V, and 20 V) for up to 100 W (5 A @20 V), or use a separate power supply via the barrel jack (up to 20 A@ 24 V). A secondary buck converter powers the ESP32-S3 and all the other components.

Versatile, Protected Power Distribution

YULC empowers you to choose how your strips receive power:

Direct Power: Route the input power straight to the strips for maximum efficiency.

Bucked-Down Power: Utilize the built-in converter to deliver 5 V or 12 V to your strips, with a maximum of 20 A. Simply populate one of the two fuse holders to select your preference.

This gives you multiple ways of powering a typical WS28112B LED strip: whether using direct 5 V input from USB or a barrel jack or stepping down power from a higher-power source, YULC is exceptionally flexible.

Dual Lighting Channel Control

YULC comes with two separate LED channels, each equipped with a level shifter to ensure clean data transmission even for extended LED strips, giving you complete strip control—no external level shifting or pixel sacrifices necessary.

Dedicated power MOSFETs (one for each channel) eliminate the need for external relays to physically turn on and off the strips, saving a considerable amount of power for long runs of LEDs. These allow for direct control and smooth dimming via PWM for simpler strips.

Full set of protections

YULC provides:

• Automotive blade fuses protect against over-current events
• Heatsinks and active cooling thanks to a 5V fan
• Protection during voltage negotiation between YULC and the Type-C charger
• ESD protection for Power Delivery and ESP32-S3 data
• Transient protection for the Type-C power bus
• Possibility to safely program the ESP32-S3 while powering YULC from an external power supply.

Eenclosure

YULC does not have a "full closed" enclosure, because it needs a lot of air flow while stressing it with a lot of output current. So actually the "enclosure" will consists in two pieces: a simple flat base to screw to YULC with three M2 screws and the fan holder.

Here you can find the enclosure installing guide. The final result is this:

A DIN bracket it's also available: