What I did on my summer vacation,

What I did on my summer vacation, aka - How I drove 2640 leds off of a single digix (12 lines of 120 LEDs each and 12 lines of 100 leds). (This was the controller for Locus).

The breadboard has 4 74HCT245’s, used for level shifting the digix’s 3.3v signals to 5 - each cat 5 cable carried data for four strips.

Power was run completely separately.

This was also the project that finally sold me on the necessity for the level shifters for ws2812b’s

Ooh ooh post the link to the video…

This one? https://www.flickr.com/photos/technorainbows/14612360024/

That’s the very one. :slight_smile:

So what necessitated the need for the level shifters? The distance between the chip and the first LED perhaps?

No - 3.3v signals and chips wanting 5v signals. Even with short wires I found it to be a crap shoot. There’s a number of articles out there on the need for level shifters with 2812 and friends.