Description
Adafruit DotStar Digital LED Strip – Black 144 LED/m – 0.5 Meter – BLACK
These new DotStar LED strips are a great upgrade for people who have loved and used NeoPixel strips for a few years but want something more versatile. DotStar LEDs use generic 2-wire SPI, so you can push data much faster and there’s no specific timing required. They also have high PWM refresh rates, so you can do Persistence-of-Vision (POV) and have less flickering, particularly at low brightness levels.
DotStar LEDs are 5050-sized LEDs with an embedded microcontroller inside the LED. You can set the color/brightness of each LED to 24-bit color (8 bits each red green and blue). Each LED acts like a shift register, reading incoming color data on the input pins, and then shifting the previous color data out on the output pin. By sending a long string of data, you can control an infinite number of LEDs, just tack on more or cut off unwanted LEDs at the end. The PWM is built into each LED-chip so once you set the color you can stop talking to the strip and it will continue to PWM all the LEDs for you
These LEDs have 2 wires (input and output) for sending data – one clock pin and one data pin. That means you need two pins, not one, to control DotStars. Because the clock and data is separated, you can use any processor speed or type to control these strips, and you don’t have to worry about being careful with the timing. Hardware SPI support is handy but not required. This makes them excellent for use with any microcontroller or microprocessor. It’s very easy to port the library, and you can send data to the pixels at up to 32MHz clock rate.
Another nice thing about DotStars is their high PWM rate. You only have to set the 24-bit color data for each pixel LED once, and then the LED+built-in-chip will handle the PWMing of the red, green and blue. DotStars have a 20 KHz PWM rate, so even when moving the strip around, you won’t see the pixelation, the color blending is very smooth.
The strip is made of flexible PCB material, and comes with a weatherproof sheathing. You can cut this stuff pretty easily with wire cutters, there are cut-lines every 1 LED. Solder to the 0.1″ copper pads and you’re good to go. Of course, you can also connect strips together to make them longer, just watch how much current you need.
You must use a 5V DC power supply to power these strips, do not use higher than 6V or you can destroy the entire strip
This strip comes as a single half meter with a 4-pin JST SM connector on each end. If you buy multiples, you will get multiple half-meter strips, they will not come on a continuous strip!
