How many LEDs can i run off of 1 data line from an ESP8266? Im wanting to put up year round lights on my house running 2 data lines from the center outwards but i wanna know what the limit is before i experience issues. Idk if theres a way to make more than 1 ESP8266 control LEDs as 1 strip over WiFi? But i would rather keep it simple lol
I’m not sure what the actual limit is, but I run 250 WS2811s off one pin with no problems
I may go with 30/m instead of my usual 60/m just for the distance. Ive never ran over 100. Heck not even 100. My max was 85 on my candy cane. I just cant split more than 2 data lines without having a ridiculously long wire carrying the signal to another strip which may not make it that far lol
I would recommend against using strips if you live somewhere where the temperature fluctuates dramatically. I recall someone here that had constant issues with strips that they had mounted outside. Order some bullet style WS2811s or the C9 Christmas light strands from Ray Wu. The C9 bulb part can be removed when its not the Christmas season.
What would you consider dramatic? And im planning to leave these in their silicon tube sealed on both ends with silicon adhesive then chilling inside 1" PEX tubing 
I agree, WS2811s seem to last very well permanently outside. I’ve got 250 on my deck, been there three years, no problems at all
I believe it was Allen Gee that was having issues with WS2812 strips on the outside of his house last year. I would be curious to know if he still runs into issues with having to replace single LEDs. I tried to + him on the post but his privacy settings must prevent him from being found.
So would WS2811’s survive better in double digit temperatures?
It gets up to 40C on my deck, and mine are fine
Oh i mean in °F
between 1 and usually around a little less or way more than you’ll actually need for the project.
temp range, waterproof weatherproof warn-out or what, all the ratings for this, some ratings of that, quality control, installer skill, actual usage, user expectation etc?
I have 600 ws2812 run by one data line from an esp8266. The issue is more how to power them.
I can just route a few extension cords to separate power supplies spaced out to cover for 2 segments of lights that need power injected. So is there a limit to when a strip is so long thatsending data down it creates an issue?
The main limiting factors are A) power and B) refresh rate
If you are feeding power into the strip every 5-10 meters, that should work (definitely don’t run power to the strips through the micro controller)
Assuming you’re running WS2812b’s, you’ll start to notice a drop in frame rate as you approach 300 LEDs for super smooth animations, and about 500 LEDs for even basic ones (you’ll start dropping below like 15fps)
This is a limitation of the way the data signal propagates through the chips for 2811s/2812s.
If you put your controller mostly in the middle of your run, then you can run off of two different pins, sending one signal in each direction to two different arrays, and double that number. The ESP8266 should be able to handle it fine - though I’ll admit I’m JUST starting out with those controllers, switching over from Nano/Micro
@chad_steinglass thank you so much for the reply. Yeah i currently have a Wemos D1 mini pro running 4 different pins at the same time as 1 single strip. I was planning on setting up animations for it but never got around to it lol
@Cristian_Martinez - if you’re displaying mostly static patterns and not animations, then you can run LOTS of LEDs on a single pin/strip. There are some experts on this board that know much more about the libraries and hardware, but I believe that when you icnrease the size of your LED strip, when you call the show function the library automatically will send the signal in a way that all of your pixels will get it - it just takes a long time. So you might have 1000 pixels on one pin, but it will take like 250 millis or more to call the show function!
apparently the ‘clock’ signal in most apa102 chips is starting to get critically degraded 250 leds out.