Hello everyone, I was hoping for a bit of advice or experience with mixing different kinds of addressable LEDs on one data line. I have some 144/m stuff mixed with adafruit neopixel ring, mixed with a few individual 5mm LEDs, and some of the new side emitting strips. I haven’t wired it up yet, but it just occurred to me that as the data that gets passed along, my light may come across timing or even read issues for that pixel, and colour order if I have checked my parts… Has anyone had issues or found the potential problems negligible? Thanks in advance.
Anything connected to a data line needs to be the same pixel type. Each pixel type would need it’s own data line (and addLeds line in the FastLED code).
If they’re the same chip/protocol and just a different color order (as is the case with WS2812B strips and the through-hole neopixels), then you can get away with them all in one line, perhaps with a resistor between each section. Just tell FastLED the color order for the majority of the LEDs and then swap the different ones in your code. Or if there’s a lot of different orders, pick a simple base order like RGB and have a custom function to convert. The downside of this is that you can’t directly use FastLED’s fill functions without careful usage of the input colors and LED ranges. This is also obviously only a good idea if it’s significantly less work than rewiring the hardware.
@1icri noted, thanks! Most seem to be the same chipset type except the sewable flora neopixel v2 ones. I might just use them instead where I was planning on the 5mm LEDs instead… I’ll have to see if I can make them fit… thanks for the tips!