Additional info – the mqtt in and out on the node-red flow edit only show connecting – I initially created my own flow, but when it did not work I copied your flow and when it didn’t work either I made some minor (I hope) changes.

BUT I have something broken somewhere – please give me some debug ideas.

It does not help that I have had many interruptions for other work, but I have only gotten as far as module 5.2 and can not get past this section.
I have tried both an ESP8266 and an ESP32-CAM, but either I do not understand what I am supposed to see or I have broken something.
The problem is two fold:
1. The Ui shows what appears to be a working switch – on/off works visually. But both the text and counter only show the labels – no text or counts.
2. The serial monitor shows the counter code working – I get continuous periodic count events – so I commented out that code in the sketch temporarily so I could better debug the LED.
The LED code does not seem to work – I thought it was my 8266 so I switched to an ESP32-CAM I have, it still does not switch, I loaded Rui’s ESP32 Blink code and it worked fine, so I moved that code snip to the ESP32-CAM sketch, but nothing changed.
Switching the LED in the UI does not do anything on the serial monitor.
I could use some suggestions. I have cut and pasted the serial output (counter code commented out in the Sketch) – NOTE that this output is all I get even with repeated LED switches in the UI.

The JSON code is below the output.
Let me know if you need more info

07:45:52.810 -> Connecting to Wi-Fi...

07:45:52.844 -> [WiFi-event] event: 0

07:45:52.924 -> [WiFi-event] event: 2

07:45:53.006 -> [WiFi-event] event: 4

07:45:54.244 -> [WiFi-event] event: 7

07:45:54.244 -> WiFi connected

07:45:54.244 -> IP address: 

07:45:54.244 -> 192.168.1.133

07:45:54.278 -> Connecting to MQTT...

07:45:54.309 -> Connected to MQTT.

07:45:54.309 -> Session present: 0

07:45:54.309 -> Subscribing at QoS 2, packetId: 1

07:45:54.309 -> Publishing at QoS 0

07:45:54.309 -> Publishing at QoS 1, packetId: 2

07:45:54.309 -> Publishing at QoS 2, packetId: 3

07:45:54.309 -> Subscribe acknowledged.

07:45:54.309 ->   packetId: 1

07:45:54.309 ->   qos: 2

07:45:54.309 -> f

07:45:54.309 -> a

07:45:54.309 -> l

07:45:54.309 -> s

07:45:54.309 -> e

07:45:54.309 -> Publish received.

07:45:54.309 ->   topic: led

07:45:54.309 ->   qos: 2

07:45:54.309 ->   dup: 0

07:45:54.309 ->   retain: 1

07:45:54.309 ->   len: 5

07:45:54.309 ->   index: 0

07:45:54.309 ->   total: 5

07:45:54.309 -> Publish acknowledged.

07:45:54.309 ->   packetId: 2

07:45:54.512 -> Publish acknowledged.

07:45:54.512 ->   packetId: 3

———————————————–
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“label”: “Flow 1”,
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“info”: “”,
“env”: []
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“type”: “ui_base”,
“theme”: {
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“edited”: true,
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“site”: {
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“hideToolbar”: “false”,
“allowSwipe”: “true”,
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{
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{
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“tooltip”: “Controls Builtin_LED”,
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“onvalue”: “true”,
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