Hello fellow Arduino'ers,
I'm working on a project to separate the high, middle and low frequencies and control a ledstrip on my music with a color for each tone.
My next step would be to have a music visualiser on my wall, so I'd need a cuttable individually addressible ledstrip for that. I'd like to keep the price as low as possible, so I'd buy it on a chinese website like aliexpress or Ebay.
My question now is weather you guys just could sum up some types of ledstrips (with or without a link) that'd be usefull for this project? I want to compare some d then order.
Thanks!
Bram
Here are a few names/types I found in an... arduino sketch, when I was busy for christmas last year.
WS2801, ws2811, WS2812, lpd6803, lpd8806, apa102, apa104, tm1804, tm1809, ucs1903, ucs9812.
Personally I think the WS2812-led is most interesting, the leds have the hardware to control 'm built within, you can get strips with lots of leds/ft.
They probably are the most popular addressable leds at the moment and supported by the arduino community quite well.
Hi,
I agree, ws2812b leds are a good choice. They come in 30, 60, even 144 leds per metre. They are easy to drive with Arduino and there are two libraries to choose from: NeoPixel and FastLeds.
Things to watch out for:
- They run on 5V, not 12V like most other led strips
- They need a lot of current. Assume 60mA per led to work out how big a psu you will need
- The libraries need quite a lot of ram memory to run - 3 bytes per led + other overheads. Remember that basic Arduino line Uno only have 2K ram.
Paul
Thanks both! I'll try to find WS2812b then, as I'll need those widely supported libraries: my knowledge of electronics is limited (but tha's about to change: passed for first semester of engineering studies 
).
And thanks for summing up some possible issues. I'll try to go with my 2k ram, but if it doesn't work out as I expect this might save me a lot of time in troubleshooting :)!
Karma for both of course!
I'll try to go with my 2k ram,
You need three bytes per LED as a buffer, and you need some RAM to just run the sketch so the number of LEDs you can drive is limited. You might be better off with an Arduino Mega that has 8K of RAM.
Grumpy_Mike:
You need three bytes per LED as a buffer, and you need some RAM to just run the sketch so the number of LEDs you can drive is limited. You might be better off with an Arduino Mega that has 8K of RAM.
Thanks for another warning.
But is this even necessary if I'd go with a max of 300 LED's?
300*3=900 bytes --> 1100 bytes of the 2k left.
Sorry, I don't know anything about that...
But is this even necessary if I'd go with a max of 300 LED's?
Yes that looks fine. But it is the first time you mentioned the number 300.
Grumpy_Mike:
Yes that looks fine. But it is the first time you mentioned the number 300.
Indeed, sorry about that and thanks for your help!
is there a difference between ws2812 and ws2812b?
You can buy 1 and not the other?