ESP32-POE not working with RGB leds when powered with POE

[mikeh]

Dear Community,
I have a ESP32-POE-EA that I am using with a strip of 30, SK9822 leds and the Fastled library. It is connected with a BSS138 based voltage level shifter for the IO and a capacitor in parallel with the 5V supply. It is powered from the 5V pin on the board. It works perfectly when powered through USB. I wrote a test program that lights 1 led red at a low intensity to minimize power draw.
The problem occurs when I power the board with POE. The board powers up, connects to ethernet, does everything it is supposed to do, except it does not light the led. I measured voltage to the leds, it is 5V as expected. I measured current draw and it is around 27mA.
Data pin is GPIO 15 and clock pin is GPIO 14. I have also tried 16 and 13 with the same results. Led lights when connected to USB, does not light when connected to POE. I should mention I disconnect USB when connecting ethernet and vise versa as I know this board is not isolated.
I suspect that this is not a power issue, but rather a signal issue. I am just clueless as to what would cause this. Does anyone have any idea? Any help would be much appreciated.
Sincerely,
Mike

[LubOlimex]

There is no obvious reason for this behavior. All pins you mentioned seem free. Tho. GPIO14 and GPIO15 are also routed to the SD card, if you have SD card remove it when testing.

I doubt the PoE supply. What is the voltage coming to the board? Did you double check the settings of the network equipment? Is the current sufficient?

Notice that this LED strip probably consumes 250mW per LED, this means around 7.5W for the whole strip. You can NOT power this strip from the ESP32-POE, since its max wattage is around 4W (around 3W available).