What do you all recommend as the cheapest + most powerful driver or LEDs with/without internet or other features?
The Huzzah looks pretty cool but it’s sold out right now.
What controllers that are compatible with arduino/fastled do you recommend if I wanted to build some small lamp/fixtures? Internet connectivity isn’t critical right now but eventually I want to get into that. Initially I probably want something small and inexpensive, but perhaps with a reasonable amount of memory to hold a lot of different programs. Thoughts?
If you don’t care about connectivity, then the Teensy is the way to go. It can add on BT or WiFi as well, though your experience may be good or bad with that stuff. If you can use a slightly older FastLED (3.1 I think), then the Photon is a great internet enabled board. I use it for all my stuff, and it works great, but I lose out on CRGBPaleltte and a lot of the newest stuff that’s out there. A trade off is all.
Teensy or ESP8266/NodeMCU
I use Arduino Nano boards for small <50 LED projects like lamps. 5v, so no voltage translation needed, but not much memory. 32k flash, 2k sram. Under $2.00 shipped from AliExpress China.
Like Stefan said, the ESP8266 development boards with the voltage regulators on board are nice. More memory, but 3.3v. Inexpensive too, under $4.00