Hey folks, I’m trying to make some POV stuff with many leds. Neo pixels were a dead end, update rate way too slow. Can anyone tell me which pixel strips or sets of pixels are currently the sweet spot for Teensy 3/FastLED/??? for making big pov sticks/pois/whatevers. Thanks!
P9813s are fast, but fairly expensive. LPD8806s are also very fast, and much more reasonably priced - especially via AliExpress. I have projects using both, each driven by a Teensy 3.1. Neither are huge, but one of them has 576 LEDs.
Thanks Dave. Are the WS2801 not really good enough? Getting tired of buying wrong parts, lol.
Check out this documentation page for a good description of the various supported LED types. It sounds like WS2801s are not particularly fast.
I use LPD8806 exclusively for my POV design. WS28x series are way too slow. Since I make custom strips, having easy access to the LPD8806 ICs is a big plus.
Thanks, that’s really helpful. Where do you get the them? I found LPD8806 strips but the pixels are super far apart, so I have to figure out what to get to cram them close together.
I have a few vendors in China that I order stuff from, LEDs from one, ICs from another. @Jon_Burroughs recently posted some pictures of the pieces I make for my POVpoi unit. You can see his post here: Google Workspace Updates: New community features for Google Chat and an update on Currents
WS2810s aren’t the latest available - that would be the WS2812Bs. But the underlying LEDs are 5050s. IIRC, the maximum bus speed on the WS2812B is 1Mhz.
The LEDs have zero effect on the speed, it’s the controller that’s in them. They’re not particularly fast. They’re good for slow POV, slow movement.