Blaž Kristan

Try factory reset or erase flash and flash again.

I have about 20 ESP01 (and ESP01S) installations and all of them are working flawlessly. I am not saying you do not have issues but WLED 0.13.1 is stable and...

Are you using properly designed ESP shield/controller? If not, use one. IMO two of the finest are @srg74 Wemos and ESP01 [shields](https://www.tindie.com/stores/serg74/) and @intermittech [Dig](https://quinled.info/) controllers.

You still don't get it. 😄 Both of those are also available as DIY open source controllers.

It is all about stable power supply to ESP. I give up.

Do not force push commits. It breaks traceability.

Have you checked other MQTT tools? I am seeing correctly retained messages.

Check with AsyncMqttClient library about QoS since WLED uses that.

wled.cpp -> initConnection()

Please attach USB to ESP and monitor serial output. You can use any utility that can read COM port (Arduino IDE or MS VSC + PIO also feature serial monitor...