I was shopping around for 16x16 APA-102 panels for this year’s Burning Man project (they’re still hella expensive), and I found these for US$50 including ePacket shipping. Marked down from US$70, which is great for me since I need two. I almost gave up and went with WS2812 panels, but the lower current draw and absence of flicker is so damn good.
This is gonna be so much fun…
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/M/32791275417.html
$50 is not too much more than the WS2812B for $35 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01DC0IOCK , but I’m curious:
With a proper uC, even an ESP8266, you can run the clockless panels without problems and you save money on them.
For lower current draw, do you have details?
I noticed that my 32x24 array (768 pixels) is taking 0.7A with everything off, which is not ideal given that I’m running on batteries.
As for flicker, have you seen flicker on WS2812B? Are you doing PoV stuff?