Does anyone know if with the new FastLED library if you can drive WS2801's

Does anyone know if with the new FastLED library if you can drive WS2801’s without SPI? Does the library know how to big bang WS2801 via normal pins?

Absolutely. I’ll even wager that FastLED has the fastest bit-banged I/O of any library you might find out there.

Let us know if you run into trouble, but those particular functions are very well tested at this point and lots of people are using them for exactly that.

how do I initialize it to use software vs the spi?
#define FORCE_SOFTWARE_SPI 1?

Just specify the pins you’re using in the FastLED.addLeds line, and it’ll do the right thing. If you specify hw SPI pins, it’ll use hw SPI. If you specify non-hw SPI pins, it’ll use bit-banging.

That help?

awesome. Thanks! Worked pefectly…

Excellent. Can’t wait to see what you build with it.

My reason to use bit-banging is because most (if not all) of the LED strips or drivers in use do not have a pin select, so you can’t (easily) share them with other SPI devices, such as an SD card reader, or an SPI sensor.

There are ways to make them play nice with SPI devices and it would require some additional hardware but why do that. FastLED’s bit banging is still faster than I would need for my POV work - in my case the SD card is the bottle neck, I simply can’t go faster than it can read. :slight_smile:

Doing the lights for the temple for Saguaro Man the AZ burning man regional.