Can I get a recommendation for an ESP based LED controller?

Over the last few weeks been tinkering and building LED tracks using warm white and white white LED lamps. 
 
1 - For the stove area installed multiple LED tracks which are only switched at the wall switch using a micro 1 AMP 120 VAC to 12 VDC LED power supply.
 
The coloring of the stove is black and aluminum.  The lighting is high relating to WAF and only utilized on demand.  I did add one track of lighting to the underside of the microwave (with lighting and fan).  There were three small screws holding the metal shielding to the bottom of the microwave.  Removed screws and installed three brackets / clips to hold the aluminum track of lighting.  Looks OEM.
 
2 - The other kitchen endeavor used SMD5050 dense white white lighting.  This is dim at night and bright during the day.  First experiment was:
 
A - using micro LCD 1.25 AMP power supply to a Mosquitto controlled updated firmware Sonoff SV device with a manual dimmer on it.  Powering on and off the LED micro PS via a regular decora style wall switch. 
 
B - Purchased the above mentioned RGB controller and upgraded the firmware on it yesterday.  It has 5 channels: RGB, white white and warm white.  I configured it for only white white control using mosquitto.  Works great and it remembers the settings.  Only manual control is via the wall switch.  There is no manual dimming on it unless I add a pot to it.  Easy to modify board with 4 traces and holes for JTAG and flashing jumper.  Soldered on the JTAG and flashing jumper pins.  Wrote the device specific firmware to it and I was good to go.  The firmware boots up the device in AP mode.  Here set NTP and a static IP address on it.  Even lets you telnet to the device.  Then configured it for Mosquitto on and off and dimming.  Took maybe 20 minutes.

Probably will never do RGB with these devices and will using them for single color dimming. For $8 though it is work the price. IE: micro PS is around $8 plus price of $8 for controller plus price of aluminum tracks and diffuser. I found that soldering the power leads to the LED strips is best versus the clips that come with the LED strips.
 
C - this endeavor was for some book shelves in the home office.  These are about 7 foot X 4 foot and I have two of them in the office.  Here was using halogen style pucks for indirect lighting and dimming them via a UPB switch.  A link from the wall switch to the lamp module.  Worked fine.  Here purchased a dimmable LED power supply and used warm white strips of LEDs.  Dims fine with UPB switch except you do not really notice the dimming until you are at 50% or less.  Here decided to put a dual decora toggle face plate on the universal UPB base.  One toggle controls two office lamps and one controls the LED lamps.  Using the UPB automation for these LEDs and it works great.
 
Testing RGB controller this morning.  Working fine.
 
Note: that the + (positive) LED connection goes to VCC and the - (negative) connection goes to WW (which is channel 4 of 0 to 4).
 
Powering off and on device it remembers the DIM value.  Powering the relay button on and off it remembers DIM value.
 
I want to add a manual potentiometer to the device next.

With 5 channels rated at 4 AMPs each you can control all of them with relay and indivually assign dimming to each channel. For example with kitchen LEDs you can autonomously connect 5 channels of LEDs and control each individual channel to a fixed dim level.
 
I have it dimmed down here to a glow but it is difficult to tell with picture.
 
RGB3.jpg

These are the mosquitto settings for the variables.
One variable is a slider value 0 to 255 and the second variable is just an on and off relay button.
 
RGB2.jpg
 
Note here using Homeseer 3 for my Mosquitto connected devices these days.

That said you can utilize OpenHAB, Home assistant, Domoticz and rest of the open source home automation programs in Internetlandia today as they all include Mosquitto. (and if you are in to the Amazon Alexa or GV you can utilize this stuff today with Mosquitto).

Found a small RGB strip to test colors today. Probably will never install RGB but this way I can test the RGB functions any how.
 
Been testing the H801 RGB controller using all 5 channels for RGB plus 2 white LED strips mode here.  Works great.
 
 H801RGBTesting.jpg  
 
Only lacking here was a direct mechanism of control.   
 
With the Sonoff SV LED controller here put an analog pot that would work the device.  
 
Homeseer user John has tested an on/off and dim control to work great using 3 GPIO pins on the Magic Home RGB controller.  
 
I plan to implement his methodology for the H801 controller. 
 
Thinking I can fit the pot/switch right on the existing case.  
 
[youtube]http://youtu.be/TwK5t6esXu0[/youtube]
 
H801RGBTesting-1.jpg
 
 
Just a note here relating to the el cheapo tiny 120VAC to 12VDC 1 and 1.25 AMP LED power supplies that I am testing. 
 
One died this week connected to a 4 foot test strip of SMD5050 LED lamps.  Testing a new one outside of the box and it does get hot after about 15 minutes.
 
Upping the PS to a 2 AMP small footprint UL approved LED driver.  Hopefully this one works over time.
 
For testing here made strips of LEDs mounted in tubes with barrel connectors.  Easy to mount on clips and change.  Made up strips here of SMD5050 and SMD3528 lamps.  Due to WAF chose to go with the SMD5050 white LEDs over the SMD3528 warm LEDs for the kitchen counter tops.
 
New UL approved 2 AMP mini LED driver is working well now (over 2 weeks).   

Stay away from the mini 1 and 1.25 AMP LED drivers. Here had one fail (and burn up) after a few weeks of it being on 24/7. It took out the SonOff SV with fail.
 
Note that this LED driver is a tad under 4" wide which just fits the 4X4 electrical box just fine.  
 
Modded a MagicHome RGB controller for use as a combo on / off dimmer for one channel LEDs device.  
 
These are on sale on Amazon for less than $5 each.  The combo controllers come with an IR remote control.  
 
I went to using Espurna firmware / MQTT with these.   
 
Easy to upgrade and a bit more difficult to wire up as the board is tiny and wiring is to little pads on the board.   The included modifications for this configuration will be a digital on / off / dim pot and it will be mounted in the same case as the Sonoff SV (which is dead now).  
 
sonoffsv.jpg  
 
magichome1.jpg  
 
magichome2.jpg
 
magichome3.jpg

Works fine with Homeseer 3 mcsMQTT and Home Assistant and can work independantly from the automation software using the built in timer scheduler. Here keep the under the counter LED lamps on 24/7 and dimmed down a bit at night.
 
Friday, November 30, 2018 update to modded Sonoff WiFi basic 1-wire mini hub.
 
I was able to get it to work with Espurna firmware with 5 extended DS18B20 temperature sensors.  Very different than using Tasmota firmware.
 
Homeseer mcsMQTT was easy and Home Assitant yaml was a bit different (no json templates) and I did struggle a bit with it.
 
Here is the configuration yaml piece I used for the multisensors.  When using the Espurna firmware HASS stuff it names each sensor the same.
 
sensor:
  - platform: yr
    name: Weather
    forecast: 24
    monitored_conditions:
      - temperature
      - symbol
      - precipitation
      - windSpeed
      - pressure
      - windDirection
      - humidity
      - fog
      - cloudiness
      - lowClouds
      - mediumClouds
      - highClouds
      - dewpointTemperature
  - platform: mqtt
    name: Hallway
    state_topic: SonOff-1Wire-1/temperature/0
    unit_of_measurement: °F
  - platform: mqtt
    name: Basement
    state_topic: SonOff-1Wire-1/temperature/1
    unit_of_measurement: °F
  - platform: mqtt
    name: SonOff1_temperature2
    state_topic: SonOff-1Wire-1/temperature/2
    name: Hallway
  - platform: mqtt 
    state_topic: SonOff-1Wire-1/temperature/3
    unit_of_measurement: °F
  - platform: mqtt
    name: SonOff1_temperature4
    state_topic: SonOff-1Wire-1/temperature/4
    unit_of_measurement: °F
  - platform: mqtt
    name: Kitchen_Temp
    state_topic: SonOff-1Wire-2/temperature
    unit_of_measurement: °F
  - platform: mqtt
    name: Kitchen_humidity
    state_topic: SonOff-1Wire-2/humidity
    unit_of_measurement: '%'
  - platform: mqtt
    state_topic: '/GarageDoor1/SENSOR'
    name: Garage
    unit_of_measurement: °F
    value_template: '{{ value_json ["DS18x20"]["DS1"]["Temperature"] }}'


 
 
BTW - the above yaml lines and a cut a paste will debend you HA start up.  
 
I have been using gedit and went to a yaml editor.  You can can also use an on line yaml checker for this.  
 
Somewhere in the thread a yaml editor was recommended.  Here changed the font size so I could see more of the yaml file on my desktop computer monitors.  
 
One indent more or less will trash the start up of HA (needs two indents under main topics).
 
I still have issues removing old unused variables in HA.
 
I have disabled the homeasisstant option in Espurna to shut off the auto generation of variables and just adding them to configuration.yaml and deleted the database to see if the old ones drop off and they do not so I am just hiding them.
 
Still in learning mode here and there was a big difference between using the Tasmota JSON template and a MQTT line for the temperature sensors for me. I combined them and noticed too that you can just put all of the sensors under the sensors: configuration.
 
This is way different than Homeseer 3 mcsMQTT where you just see (filtering) the MQTT and assign a variable to it. mcsMQTT has a built in sniffer of sorts.
 
mmcsMQTT.jpg
 
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