Testing a 5 meter roll of #APA102 #LEDs with #FastLED. I’m going to see if I can put together a 256 shades-of-gray color palette to really put it through it’s paces.
Where’d you get the APA102s from, and if you don’t mind saying, what’d they cost?
Are those the new style led package ones with better heat dissipation?
Aliexpress.com lists APA102 strips starting at € 13,75 / Meter (naked), while WS28212B strips start at € 7;75 / meter. APA102 has the advantage of an additional clock line, which may be easier to control using Raspberry Pi. (WS2812B timing is critical, Raspberries usually are not able to reliably control those.)
There’s load of these offered, all of a sudden!
I hope that wired up pixels are offered before next December.
Ray Wu on aliexpress is currently selling apa102 strips for $9/meter for 60 leds per meter, the same price he is selling ws2812b 60 LED/meter strips for.
I bought 2 5m rolls from here: http://bit.ly/1AhMB7j (AliExpress) for $40.99 each during their 11.11 sale.
@Christopher_Smolinsk Yes, these are the new-style LED package that has better heat dissipation. They also have a much higher refresh rate than the older WS2812b and WS2811 strips. You can realistically use these strips for persistence of vision displays!
@Dan_McDougall according to the link you posted, it doesn’t look like they’re the new package. The new package has a square lens instead of a round one.
I’m not too interested in POV type applications, I’m more concerned with color reproduction and brightness of output. The WS2812B’s are bright as all heck, but I’m hoping that the new package APA102’s will yield even more light.
These are the new package: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/5meter-DC5V-APA102-led-pixel-srip-60pcs-APA102-5050-LED-M-with-60pixels-BLACK-PCB-wire/32222188412.html
They’re e available as APA102 & APA102C, square and round respectively.
Tim’s blog has some good write ups about them https://cpldcpu.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/apa102/ and https://cpldcpu.wordpress.com/2014/11/30/understanding-the-apa102-superled/#more-398
Ahh yes, I see the difference now. These are definitely the APA-102C version with the round package.
Thanks for the information on the APA102’s.
Hi Dan,
Can you post any sketches you come up with here or on pastebin? Thanks.