Individually addressable RGB LED comparison?

[DeuxVis]

Yup, like Dougal I had a stock of 100 old non-B model - I'll buy some WS2812B in the future.


By the way someone gave me the link to those adapter PCBs which seems a really cheap way of mounting those leds for breadboarding : http://www.ebay.com/itm/20pcs-SOP8-MSOP8-SOIC8-TO-DIP8-Double-Side-Adapter-Converter-PCB-Board-/390767549675
I believe it beats all the price I could get for getting my own PCBs fabricated in hobby sized amounts.

Sample picture of mouting a (non-B) led following. Could probably fit the capacitor on the unused pad if needed.

[DeuxVis]

Hey although he doesn't mention it, this guy is using a digispark and a prototyping shield to test those "through hole" ws2812 leds. Nice !

[edit]Ooops no sorry he actually mention digispark, I didn't read it at first.[/edit]

http://cpldcpu.wordpress.com/2014/02/18/new-member-of-the-ws2812-family/

Link found on hackaday.

[gogol]

He is also active here in the forum, right now it seems, that he has taken over micronucleus from Bluebie. 

They seem nice, especially for projects, where you need only a small number of LEDs. However the price is heavy.  More than $1.
Compared to $0.25 per piece, if you buy 4m strips, it is really expensive.

Maybe they will appear soon at aliexpress/ebay/dx for lower prices.

[matt79]

In a lot of cases, WS2812b strip will refresh a bit slower than LPD8806 strips. The former use an 800 KHz datastream, the latter (if using hardware SPI) might be running at 1-2 MHz (it varies -- have to look at the code, see what it's doing).

Unless you have a ludicrous number of LEDs, the data transfer is rarely the bottleneck. Much of it depends on the efficiency of the code that's generating the colors. Floating point math, for example, can really bog things down.

[DeuxVis]

I received some WS2812B and did some breadboard adapters out of perfboard and then stripboard.
The later is far more easy to solder as the copper is not only located under the leds footprint.

[DeuxVis]

I made a fritzing part for the WS2812B, if anyone needs it...

https://code.google.com/p/fritzing/issues/detail?id=2753#c82

[JoeCool]

Is there any WS2811 / WS2812 kind RGB SMD LED available on the market, that is smaller than the WS2811 / WS2812 devices? I need smaller LEDs, but with same functionality like WS2811 / WS2812.

[dougal]

For anyone who hasn't seen it yet, @cpldcpu has an article up on the APA201 modules. These are similar to LPD8806, in that they use a 2-wire SPI protocol, rather than a timing-sensitive 1-wire protocol like WS2811/2812.

http://cpldcpu.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/apa102/

[Nick1980]

WS2801 and LPD8806 Based on Standard two line SPI protocol, it have higher fresh rate than WS2811/WS2812B.
WS2801 Versus LPD8806, we prefer to Lpd8806 products, its repair rate is lower, because its solder point is less than WS2801.
WS2811/WS2812B also have its advantage, Easy control and cheap price, make simple projects is enough.

[Rickster]

Has anyone found a reasonable bulk source for the through hole (5mm) parts?

I'd like to try a light cube, but haven't found hem at a reasonable price yet.

Thanks in advance.

[bcsteeve]

Hi, sorry for digging up such an old post.

I found it by Google and you guys seem to know what you're talking about in this space, so figured it wouldn't hurt to ask.

I'm working on a project that retrofits into an existing device and does [whatever, it doesn't really matter].  As a bonus to users, I want to add a backlight to the otherwise unlit display.  In fact, I've already been offering this for years, but in my current redesign i'm hoping to upgrade and offer RGB functionality so they don't have to choose their backlight color ahead of time.  As a bonus for me, I don't have to supply multiple colors!

So I started looking at ICs and the only thing I came  up with was the rather expensive NCP5623.  It is ideal in that it uses i2c, which my board has readily available.  But it is expensive, as mentioned.  So I stumbled across some mention of this WS28XX stuff and quickly gather it is the control chip for common and cheap Chinese LED lights trings.  OK, it must be cheap then!  And it is... really, very cheap in volume.  That's great.  But...  is it suitable?  I'm not driving a chain of LEDs.  Just one R, one G, and one B... mixed to provide a user-selectable color. 

So I guess my first Q is:  can these work solo??  I imagine so, but maybe there's some reason they have to be in a chain.

My second Q:  for my purpose (single), is there something even better/cheaper available that I don't know about that you've come across?

Preferably I2C, but frankly I'm sure I can make any serial work.  I'm pin starved at the MCU but I'm sure I can figure something out.

Thanks!  And sorry for barging in.   Now I'm going to go check out this digistump.com site... I owe it at least that much     I have to admit I had to look up "what is the name of one of Digistump's two main products" because I had no idea!  (clever anti-spam, btw... gets people like me engaged on your sales side)

[dougal]

Q1: Yes, you can use WS2812 modules individually, without chaining them. In bulk, you can probably get them for around $0.13 each (last time I checked).

Q2: You should be able to find non-addressable 5050 RGB LED modules. The WS2812s are just the 5050s, but with a controller chip built-in.

ThingM makes an I2C LED module called the BlinkM, but it costs $15. But controlling a single RGB is just 3 pins, so only 1 more than I2C. It would probably be possible to create your own I2C LED module cheaper than the BlinkM, but I'm still not sure if it would be worth the cost?

[bcsteeve]

Q2: You should be able to find non-addressable 5050 RGB LED modules. The WS2812s are just the 5050s, but with a controller chip built-in.

I think I must have been unclear.  Or... well, one of us is confused anyway   I think when you say "5050 RGB LED modules" you're talking about the LED itself?  I'm certainly not.  I'm only referring to the controller chip (wo the WS2812, which is built into the LED body, isn't something I'm considering anyway).  What I was asking is if there is an alternative controller anyone's found that is in the same (or less) price range that is suitable for a single-output and not specialized, as these are, for chaining together.  It doesn't really matter - these are pretty cheap.


I'm suffering with their poor excuse for a "data sheet" though

Any anyone confirm the input voltage range?  The datasheet makes no mention of a minimum.  Has an "absolutely maximum of ~6V to ~7V" - which itself is a joke because there's no "~" in "absolute" and it can't be a range... it is an ABSOLUTE!   But to make it worse, they then show the circuit in a typical application with both a 5V and a... ehem... 12V supply!

But that's what I get for being cheap and looking at Chinese off-brand

[dougal]

Yes, sorry, I misunderstood what you were asking. So I guess the most important piece of information I can give here is that you can indeed use a single WS2811 (the controller chip inside a WS2812 LED module) without chaining. It's not I2C, but it only needs one control pin, and as you said, they're cheap. Though, I didn't have much luck trying to find a bulk source of just the bare ICs. (you can get 10-packs from Adafruit.com though)

[bcsteeve]

Thank you.

I did find a source of the bare ICs.  You perhaps didn't see them, or ignored them, due to their 1000 pcs minimum which happens to be what I'm looking to purchase.

Incidentally... I can buy more, if people here want some?  I'm not usually in the business of reselling individual components, but if I can be of assistance...  well, people should speak up quick because I'll be purchasing fairly soon.