I’m on a Teensy 3.6 and I’m just trying to get things to light up using the blink example. On my scope, the data and clock lines are both giving me incorrect output. I’m using pins 19 and 18 as Clock and Data respectively. I have logic level shifting and am powering my LED’s off of 5V however, data is not being transferred to the LED’s, probably as it is all jumbled. Any tips?
APA102 Chipset
Do you have a common ground connection between the leds and the 5V power supply and the Teensy?
Which level shifter are you using? (The 74HCT245N is the recommended one.)
Try pin 11 MOSI0 (for data) and 13 SCK0 (for clock) and see if that’s any different.
Occasionally the “Data In” and “Clock In” labeling is backward on the LED strip. You could try swapping those.
That pin issue fixed it, thanks! I’m eventually going to be running 4 different strands, which pins will I be able to use to control my strips? I’m currently testing all sorts of different combos
ignore me, figured it out, thanks for your help!
Great, glad you got it working!
Read this page, specifically the bottom part will be of interest to you since you’re using a Teensy and APA102 pixels.
You could also try using the #define FASTLED_FORCE_SOFTWARE_SPI line and try out using other pins.
How many pixels are you planning to run?
Also, if your plan/layout doesn’t really require strips on individual sets of pins, wiring the four sections as one large strip might be easier (depending on number of pixels).
I’m running 4 strands of 64 of a custom form factor I’ve designed (one for each limb, I don’t want to have to run wire from the end of my arm back to the input of the next limb) So that’s why I’ll need 4 sets of pins. Is there any major difference in speed if I were to enable software SPI?
I don’t know what the speed different factor is, but with the speed of the Teensy 3.6 and APA102 LEDs, and only 64 x 4 pixels it should still be plenty fast if you want to go that route.