A Scalable, Real-Time Esp32 System For Wireless Control of Ws281x Led Arrays Via Ddp

This paper presents a scalable, real-time wireless pipeline for driving large WS281x LED arrays using an ESP32-based controller and a lightweight UDP-based Distributed Display Protocol (DDP). A master node generates frames, segments them into DDP packets, and transmits them over Wi-Fi; a slave ESP32 reconstructs frames in RAM and updates multiple LED lines via hardware RMT/I2S with DMA, ensuring precise timing and handling of late or missing packets. The architecture supports offline playback and scales from small devices to multi-thousand-pixel arrays. In controlled experiments, stable performance was observed at 50~FPS with 1536 LEDs, 35--50~FPS with 5120 LEDs, and 11--12~FPS with 8960 LEDs on a single ESP32; partitioning the load across two synchronized ESP32s increased the performance. Field observations indicate good indoor/outdoor visibility and mechanical robustness, while highlighting power dimensioning and the wireless link as critical dependencies; a wired Ethernet link remains a drop-in alternative that preserves the protocol and firmware.