LEDs

Technical Electrical
1

With all of the shiny and pretty LEDs being used these days I’d like to get a better understanding of the various communication protocols needed to control the LEDs. I ask because I have a small project that needs programmable LEDs and I’m kicking around methods to see what work the best.

I’ve enumerated the Adafruit options, which include straight up SPI interfaces and the WS2811’s protocol (which doesn’t utilize a clock).

What other communication protocols are out there that are commonly used for programmable LED control?

2

I know you can commonly find LED strips that use shift registers to control them. (some just ON/OFF, some for RGB, and some even have a setup for PWM to get varying brightness and color). I believe you can get addressable modular LEDs that use I2C. Another lesser known/used technique for using straight digital IO is Charlieplexing.

Honestly I prefer Shift Registers, I feel they are the simpilest to work with, from my experience.