Dimmer LED
Lighting · Board: ESP32 · Day 2 of 100
Turn a potentiometer to fade an LED smoothly using PWM on the ESP32. Teaches analog-to-digital conversion and duty-cycle control in one evening.
How it works
Turning the potentiometer changes a voltage that the ESP32 digitizes with its ADC. That number is scaled into a PWM duty cycle — the fraction of each cycle the LED stays powered. Your eyes perceive the rapid on-off switching as smooth brightness.
What you'll learn
- PWM duty cycle
- ADC resolution and scaling
- Potentiometer as analog input
- Perceived brightness vs duty
Full project: code, wiring diagram & Wokwi simulation
The complete build guide lives in the original repo. Ours is a summary — the real thing is one click away.
Open full project on GitHub ↗Summary by SkillShop. Project by Kritish Mohapatra — code and diagrams belong to the original repo.
More Lighting builds
ESP32
Auto Night Light
An ESP32 reads ambient light through an LDR and switches an LED on automatically after dark. A gentle first project covering analog input and threshol…
Read case →
ESP32
RGB Color Mixer
Three potentiometers blend red, green, and blue channels on an ESP32-driven RGB LED. A hands-on way to learn multi-channel PWM.
Read case →
ESP32
LED Bar Graph
Ten LEDs light up in sequence as you turn a potentiometer, visualizing analog levels on the ESP32. Simple ADC-to-output mapping made visible.
Read case →