I am installing some led lights on a dock. I plan to have two runs 150ft long each. I plan to use 12v leds (with power injection and proper fusing).
The leds will be 60 leds/m and every 3 leds is controlled by once IC.
I am going to be using a teensy to control the lighting, which is communicating with an ESP8266 via serial communication to allow me to control the lights via phone.
The question is, which strips would be better for this application, WS2801 or WS2811?
I can get ws2811 for about half the price of the ws2801. I know in theory that the signal regenerates itself, but with a such a long distance, i am thinking strips with dedicated timing lines might be a bit more resilient to noise?
I’d use WS2813Bs, then If a pixel fails you don’t lose the rest of the strip.
I’d also break it into 8 separate strips from a data point of view and run parallel output on the teensy, much faster frame rate. You may need RS485 modules for the long data runs.
I’d also use a teensy Octo adapter.
I’d also consider using an ESP32 instead of the teensy and ESP8266. But you either need to get a level shifter from @Jason_Coon or make your own. (Or use RS485 modules on every data line.)
I’ve just used these RS485 modules on my artificial trees (the link is to my eBay shop but you can find them elsewhere).
@Jeremy_Spencer How do you wire WS2813Bs? Do you split the data line wire in two near the strip and solder to each data pad? Or can you solder the data wire to one data pad and jump the other pad?
@Mr_Happy I use WS2812B (old version oft he ws2813b). I have 12m long strips and no issue with datas. but I have 74hC245 as level shifter /signal booster
@Franck_Marcotte As I understand it, you connect both data input lines/pads to the single data pin on the controller. (I’ve got some but haven’t had time to try them out yet…)