What is it?

This is a pro version of our Serial to 8x WS2812/APA102 Driver board. It's a UART serial to addressable LED driver board that can run 5V or 12V LEDs. It adds 12V support via a toggle switch, up to 15A power distribution, easy address jumper switches, pluggable screw terminals, and mounting board options. In 12V applications, it also provides 5V power for Pixelblaze or another micro up to 500ma.

It supports these LEDs (and compatibles):

• WS2811 / WS2812 / WS2813 / WS2815 / SK6812 / NeoPixel
• APA102 / SK9822 / DotStar

It can be used with just about any microcontroller's serial (UART) port(s), Raspberry Pi, USB serial adapters, and even software serial implementations. The outputs are level-shifted to 5v with 100 ohm impedance matching resistors for twisted pair like found in CAT 5/CAT 6. The protocol allows for up to 8 driver boards to run from the same serial line, with on board switches to set the address. Pixel data is buffered, and displayed simultaneously across all channels, and includes CRC error checking to prevent glitches.

Each channel can have its own color ordering, and can support a mix of RGB and RGBW across channels or LED types, and any mix of length, up to 800 RGB pixels or 600 RGBW pixels per channel for the WS2812 / NeoPixel types, and 600 LEDs for the APA102 / DotStar types. Thats up to 6,400 pixels per board, or 51,200 with eight!

Since data is buffered on this board and the protocol doesn't have any timing requirements, you can calculate pixel data on the fly and there's no need to buffer anything on your micro, freeing up memory.

For APA102 / SK9822 / DotStar, two channels are dedicated to clock output (one shared for each of 3 data outputs). You can drive up to 6 channels of APA102.

You can mix and match APA102 with WS2812 on the same board by specifying each channels type. Channels 6 & 7 are WS28xx only, and are used for APA102 clock support for channels 0-2 and 3-5 respectively. This means you can have any of these combinations:

• 8 WS28xx
• 1 APA102 + 6 WS28xx
• 2 APA102 + 5 WS28xx
• 3 APA102 + 4 WS28xx
• 4 APA102 + 2 WS28xx
• 5 APA102 + 1 WS28xx
• 6 APA102

The input serial protocol runs at 2Mbps. This allows up to 66k pixels/sec to be drawn per serial line, about twice the speed of typical WS2812.

Power and GND connections are also available at each channel, and works great for medium powered applications (connectors are rated up to 15A).

In this kit you get the driver board (assembled) and pluggable screw terminals. It's sold as a kit, only requiring soldering of the the Pixelblaze / data port screw terminal. Pixelblaze can be mounted directly as well.

Why did you make it?

Originally designed to expand output options for the Pixelblaze, this driver board can be driven by just about any micro. There's a growing community of folks working on using these in their projects!

What makes it special?

This solves many issues that are tough to accomplish with existing hardware/libraries:

1. Handles all of the WS2812 timing requirements. No need to lock up your CPU, disable interrupts, etc.
2. Mix and match the most common LED types side by side, and drawing simultaneously.
3. Buffers data, so you don't have to dedicate memory for each pixel!
4. Outputs all channels simultaneously (up to 64 with 8 boards).
5. CRC error checking to avoid glitches in noisy environments.
6. Handles all of the color re-ordering, and accepts RGB or RGBW ordered data.
7. Works on a single data line!
8. Input can be either 3.3 V or 5 V, and level shifts for 5V LEDs.
9. Doubles the pixels/second possible from a single output (WS2812 type)
10. Built in buck converter efficiently provides 5V 500ma power in 12V LED applications.

Drivers

• Arduino ESP8266 Driver
• Pixelblaze v2.22 or above includes support for APA102 channels and an easy to use configuration screen.