Quick question for @Mark_Kriegsman @Daniel_Garcia about Performance of APA102 vs WS2812 (before I place a very large order). If I use the 16-way parallel code on a Teensy 3.1 w/ WS2812 is that roughly the same perf as using a single long APA102 on the SPI bus since 800khz (the ws2812 timing) is about 12Mhz (the APA timing)?
Will one method or the other use up more CPU cycles? Any pros or cons one way or the other?
Apa’s can be driven as high as 24Mhz on the teensy 3.x depending on the quality of your strip. However, I have seen a number of APA102 strips have issues with needing the data rate lowered the longer the strip is. This is absolutely an issue with the strips and not the APA102 itself, as I have a 768 led APA102 board that I can easily drive at 24Mhz.
hmm, then it seems like I’m better off with ws2812’s since they’re 16 way and I’ve already built the distribution board.
Be careful if you’re running anything else on the Teensy that requires interrupts, like MIDI. It can bugger up parallel output in subtle and maddening ways.
If you’re using only 8 way parallel output you can use the octows2811 driver and get dma drive output not affected by interrupts.