I seen several posts about APA102 LED strings, including a recent post from @Mark_Kriegsman where he gave a big thumbs-up. I’ve used LPD8806 for most of my projects, but now I’m curious. What are the differences between the two, and the advantages / disadvantages?
Biggest advantage to the apa102 is that it comes in a package where the controller is in the led, like the WS2812B - makes for a much more compact setup than lpd8806 (strips can be denser and/or more flexible).
Also, and I’m still trying to figure out the best way to expose this, it has a separate 5-bit brightness adjustment for each pixel.
Oooh - I like the sound of that. I actually need a small amount of flexible strip for the project I’m currently working on. Is the FastLED support for these solid, or is it in more of a beta stage at this point?
Pretty solid - enough so that I’m shifting my future led ordering to apa102’s and they will be the next chipset to get the parallelizing experience.
That sounds great - I think I’ll order some soon to play with. Thanks Daniel!
Any chance they’re brighter than the ws2812b’s?
I doubt it, I believe they’re the same 5050s at heart.
Well, there is that APA102 version (in contradiction with APA102C) which is a different package then the 5050 with a heatsink, this could be brighter: http://cpldcpu.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/apa102/
Datasheets and typenumbers of this chip are not really consequent. Greeled calls it APA102-A2 and A1