The basic principle of choosing Addressable LED Strip controller

1 . LED strip IC signal, the number of LED strips required for the project

At present, there are two mainstream control protocols for addressable led strips on the market, one is the SPI control protocol, and the other is the DMX512 control protocol. SPI is an abbreviation for Serial Peripheral Interface. It is a [Synchronous Serial Interface] technology introduced by Motorola.

The communication principle of SPI is simple, it works in a master-slave mode, and the built-in addressable light bead is a representative one developed based on the SPI protocol. Four-wire (VDD?DATA?CLOCK?GND) products include HD107S?SK9822?APA102. The above products have fast DATA signal transmission speed, high PWM refresh rate and excellent performance. In addition, we develop lower-cost three-wire transmission (integrated transmission of data and clock signals) products, such as SK6812, WS2812B, external WS2811 and UCS1903, etc. On the basis of the third line, a product with the function of breakpoint resume transmission has also been developed. [Breakpoint Resume] That is, the damage of a single lamp does not affect the subsequent lamp beads to continue to receive signals. Its design uses the main signal and backup dual signal line transmission, representative products are WS2815B, WS2813B, SK6813, external WS2818B and LB1934A and so on.

SPI Signal LED Strip lights:

DMX Signal LED Strip lights:

Before choosing a suitable controller, you need to know what kind of signal the IC of the addressable led strip is. The addressable led strip controller of DMX512 signal, whether it is single, 4 or 8 ports, it is recommended that the number of control points should be within 300. Addressable led strip controller for SPI signal, a single port controller is recommended to control the number of points within 1500 points, 4, 8-port controller, the number of lights controlled by a single port is about 600 points.

For the controllers with 8 ports required by the project, it is recommended to use ordinary offline controllers if there are no more than 3 controllers, and use the master-sub-control mode if the controllers exceed 3. Use a single-port offline controller with a quantity within 2048 points.

It needs to be added here: how many points means how many pixels are not the number of lamp beads. The 5V addressable led strip is generally one light and one control, that is, 60 lights are 60 pixels; 12V addressable led strip has one light and one control, and three lights and one control.

Then take the led strip of 60 lights per meter as an example, there are: the difference between 60 pixels and 20 pixels. Before choosing a controller, it is necessary to know the number of pixels in order to calculate a suitable multi-port controller.

●According to the control method, the program effect changes with the frequency

When choosing a controller, you should consider whether you need to connect to a computer to control it? Select an online or offline controller. If you need to change the effect project light strip frequently, and the number of controllers is large, it is recommended to use the main and sub-control mode with a card controller or an online controller. If it is just a simple control of a fixed program, can use with card controller or simple controller

●According to the project, the minimum control unit number of led strips

The number of led strips in individual projects is small but the distribution is very scattered. In order to avoid signal loss due to distance, it is necessary to equip more controllers than the basic number of led strips according to the number of distributed parts.

●According to whether the customer requests to connect to other control systems

Such as: Madrix software control and then equipped with the corresponding controller.

The above four principles need to be considered in relation to each other and cannot be considered alone.

The controller model corresponding to the various functional requirements

1.Docking bar console control mode: S-8000L without master control can be synchronized with more than one, each plug-in card:

Console master + sub-controller: XB-Z2-L master + T-790K sub-controller, master with card inserted, sub-controller without card inserted:

2. Controllers docked to Madrix online software.

T-790K (Madrix version) eight-port single-port up to 510 points spi

Madrix is not usually recommended to control 512 light strips, the number of points controlled is less, 170 points per port.

3. General inline controller

General inline sub-controller: T-790K sub-controller

4.General offline controller

K1000C (with write code function) Single port control up to 1536 pixels SPI signal IC, 300 pixels DMX512 IC ,  can be synchronised with multiple.

K-8000C (with write code function) Eight port, Single port control up to 800 pixels SPI signal IC, 300 pixels DMX512 IC ,  can be synchronised with multiple.

5. Offline master sub-controller

XB-809-A Touch Screen Master controller:

XB-Z2-L:  Console Master Controller :

Sub-controller T-790K: