@trisweb follow up. I finally pulled all the pieces I had out, and grabbed the soldering iron ... and then looked at the resource ( https://github.com/srg74/Controller-for-WLED-firmware ) ... and realized that his "material used" must be missing several components because what I've got looks NOTHING like what he's got there. So annoyed/frustrated.

Looks like I'm going to be looking for another controller, one I can power by USB.

At least I've got the kno.wled.ge website bookmarked.

@VersionBen6999 ah! Best laid plans…

Can I help at all? WLED is pretty flexible, you might have what you need. Feel free to shoot me a pic of what you’ve got and let’s see.

@trisweb from what I can tell, I've got NOTHING needed to actually go on the board, which is just...an astronomically bad exclusion from their materials list. I'm thinking about going with https://www.athom.tech/blank-1/wled-high-power-led-strip-controller but I'd still need to figure out how to swap the power to USB. I've seen some controllers (not WLED) that appear to be 5V to USB but...

Then there's a matter of how many of those devices I'd need to power about 300 lights. (6x strands of 50).

Sigh.