Hi! Does anybody know if FastLED supports or plans support for APA102-8192?
http://neon-world.com/uploads/soft/20180301/1519900875.pdf
It’s the new APA since APA102C was discontinued. They changed from 8-bit color to 13-bit color. Not sure what that means as far as the protocol is concerned.
Protocol for the link u shared is identical to apa102c so should work fine
And if it really is 13-bit, that won’t be supported yet.
That data sheet says it’s 8 bits per channel
@Sam_Guyer Yeah I’m confused because the datasheet looks identical to APA102C but when I talked to someone at APA they said “We discontinued our old 8-bit 256-color IC and upgraded to a new 13-bit, 8192-color IC. The problem is you CANNOT run the old and new models in conjunction. Unfortunately, this is a problem that we overlooked at the time. If you make a change to your software protocol to adapt for the 8192 colors, you should not have this issue.”
Basically I’ve started getting supplies that were labeled as APA102 but don’t animate the same (looks like a lower refresh rate) and under a magnifier the IC is clearly different. APA told me that refresh rate shouldn’t be a problem so I’m thinking there’s something I’m doing wrong with the protocol.
Ok so when I compare APA102-8192 (left) and APA102C (right) side by side it seems like the data structure is slightly different, is this saying that you don’t explicitly need an end frame for 8192?
Taking a wild guess: the end frame is 32 1 bits in a row. That could also be interpreted as full white LED with 100% brightness. The old and the new LEDs may interpret 32 1 bits differently.
You only send the end frame to the first LED in the chain, but on the APA102C, it must propogate out to the rest of the LEDs if that’s what triggers an update on the whole chain. Maybe the new APAs don’t do that.
Good news everyone! APA has indicated that they no longer plan to discontinue APA102C due to complaints about this very issue with 8192!
I posted some comments here about hands on testing with the APA102-8192. At least for my purposes the APA102-8192 has some problems.
@Jordan_Applewhite I agree with you, good news that APA is continuing to produce the APA102C. I hope they are easy to find from Chinese sources in strip and matrix form. Maybe ordering direct from APA is something to consider.
