Hey guys. I’ve been working on several projects using 2811/2812s but I have a new one that needs fewer colors. I’m needing strips of single color that I can code a chase for. Does anyone know the chipset or style I should search for?
You might want to look at SMD3528
Thanks Larry. I’m not seeing a way of getting the chase done with those. They seem to be whole strip dimmable, but not individually addressable. Is there such a thing as addressable single color strips?
Not really Kris, you’d likely have to custom build such a thing. No reason why something like a WS2811/TM1809 couldn’t drive 3 (or 9) single color leds instead of RGB leds - but I don’t think anyone is manufacturing that.
Alternatively, you could just have your program code only use one color.
Thanks Daniel. That’s what I kept coming up with but I was trying cost reduction since the application only needs single colors in the chase. Thanks.
How many LEDs in the chaser? It could be worth looking at the TLC5940 chip, which can address 16 separate LEDS and provides 1024 (I think) levels of brightness on each LED, but this would involve lots more wiring than a WS2811 strip (my first attempts at a rainbow light used this chip and Piranha LEDs, worked fine but there was a complete nest of wiring underneath the LEDs), and because you would have to wire it all up, a lot of soldering too. However, it would work out cheaper than a WS2811 strip, but it is a lot more work.
The tlcs are going to be part of the next round of chips supported. There are both 12 and 16 bit versions, so they (along with the lpd1886) are likely to spearhead the development of 16bit rgb support (though first round of support might be with the current 8bit rgb code - and then we will support both 16 and 8 bit with both sets of chips - because sometimes you might want the higher fidelity, and sometimes you might want the friendlier ram support.
That’s good to hear; when I was playing with the tlc I had to hand craft a lot of the code, but I really liked the smoothness it gave. Still think I prefer the WS2811/12 strips now though, because they save me lots of wiring and that’s giving me more time to code and to think of ideas for installations.
I had another thought for Kris; I recently got some WS2811 bare board pixels, if you got these, you could wire 3 separate LEDs to each one instead of a single RGB LED and that would mean a lot less wiring, and it would behave just like a normal strip for coding.