Have you all seen this??? 2020 APA102 pixels. anyone seen these on strip yet?? The data sheet is a bit confusing, it doesn’t say anything about a driving frequency… but damn, imagine the things you could do!
Those are crazy small.
They look great 
Very small, very hard to work with manually … but imagine the stuff you can shrink by using these.
I’ve seen a lot of 3535, but no 2020 on a strip.
Uh, can’t wait till I work with them in poi application. Being able to get 2,5 resolution of 5050 on radius sounds great !
Ive emailed some of my supliers in China, all of them.came back saying “we can get them but wait time is 3months”, “quality controll is terrible” and some said they wpuldnt be making strip with this at all.
If you don’t need the flexibility of a strip, then nothing stops you from making your own rigid ones … except maybe your own capabilities. I’ve done it with the standard 5x5 ones before the high density strips started being produced. Not sure (yet) whether I want to try it with these …
I wonder if Adafruit will be stocking some strips with these anytime soon.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way. I didn’t think I could either, till I decided to just do it. Figured out EagleCAD, got some boards made, and just went for it. You’ll make mistakes along the way, but that’s how you figure things out.
Adafruit showed these in their last New Products youtube video, they talked about the first batch being unstable but they are apparently fixed. They carry them in their store.
@Franck_Marcotte https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsHFAswLve8&list=PL028933C9CA644CFB&t=4m0s I think they called them “dot star LEDs”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsHFAswLve8&list=PL028933C9CA644CFB
Indeed Adafruit calls DotStar their products that use APA102. I think Neopixel comes originally from them as well for WS2811/12. Only the naming is different although their quality control is probably much better, but they are so expensive. From Canada buying reels on Adafruit is legit 5x more expensive than Aliexpress 
@Franck_Marcotte , you have to put yourself in their position too. They need to pay for the shipping to them. They need to pay to import them to the US. Those boxes take up space in the warehouse, for which they pay rent on. They need to pay someone to inventory the contents. Someone else to package the orders, and ship them out. And ontop of all of that, they need to make a profit as well. And perhaps the biggest difference is that they will support their customers and replace the components if broken. Try that with AliExpress.
While 5x as much might seem like a lot, by the time you start including all the other costs, it climbs up really fast.
That said, nothing is stopping you from hitting AliExpress and wait the 3-4 weeks before you get your order. And if something is wrong, you’ll be waiting another 3-4 weeks for replacements, that is IF the vendor honors that and doesn’t give you the run-around to tell you it’s your fault, not theirs. Personally, I have ordered from both AliExpress (when I first started dabbling with electronics) as well as now mainly from Alibaba, the warehouse, bulk order site for AliExpress. I’ve only had one vendor send me semi-defective products and while I was able to use them, they opted to send me replacements. I just had to wait the 4 weeks it took because they wouldn’t pay for DHL Express shipment (but I did on the original order.)
Your mileage may vary of course.
Since the 2020s are apparently of sketchy quality, I’d be hesitant to buy those from AliExpress at this point. There are cheap 3535s there but I’ve no idea about the quality of those either. If you’re buying two or more meters, these are cheapest I found https://www.aliexpress.com/item/addressable-1m-144LEDs-m-DC5V-SK6812MINI-3535-led-pixel-strip-NON-waterproof-with-144pixels-M-WHITE/32451691714.html but there doesn’t appear to be any adhesive backing.
@Ashley_M_Kirchner_No Yeah I agree. I’m not holding it against Adafruit at all, I know the immense value I get from buying from them. And I buy most of my stuff there. The tutorials, support, everything they offer started the electronics adventure for me. But for LED strips it’s just too damn expensive, especially with canadian customs the costs are just insane for a one-man prototype developer. No way I could put together bigger projects if I spent hundreds on strips alone. I try to stay true to Adafruit for everything else. <3
I’ve had a few hundred of these (prototypes from APA) for about a year, but didn’t do anything with them yet other than simple tests They are so VERY tiny!
@Franck_Marcotte , I use them for prototyping only, as I can buy a small quantity for what I need. Once I know my prototype works and I’m ready to scale it up, that’s when I will go straight to Alibaba and buy them in bulk.
I’ve also had a few 100 of these for a while ( needed to make LED strip that was less than 5mm wide )