4 ms·

APA102 is strictly better than WS2812B (standard SPI, much less sensitive to timing, way less PWM flicker, similar price/availability). When you still want bar

APA102 is strictly better than WS2812B (standard SPI, much less sensitive to timing, way less PWM flicker, similar price/availability). When you still want bare metal, pick a modern uC like ESP8266 (cheap, 32 bit, integrated WiFi for trivial connectivity) instead of "classic" overpriced, outdated 8/16 bit AVR (Attiny/Atmega) based Arduino hardware. Arduino the software platform still works great of course, but so does NodeMCU which is the go to stack on ESP8266.

zaarn 7y ago
Arduino's still have a use, Atmega/Attiny in general, the chips are much cheaper, especially if you don't need connectivity.
simcop2387 7y ago
I'd recommend looking at some of the ARM dev boards instead of the ESP8266 for general purpose stuff and if you need the wifi, the ESP32. This is mostly because the ESP8266 is missing a lot of hardware functionality that you'll find in the ESP32 or any arm boards. In particular UARTs (serial ports), I2C, and SPI periphrials that can make working with other things like the APA102 a lot nicer to code for. With the arm chips you usually even can setup the SPI transfers as DMA so that you don't have to actually do any work on the cpu itself to drive the lights. That said the ESP8266 still has a place because of how cheap you can usually find them. Lowest price arm board that i know of from a manufacturer is the Teensy LC at ~$12USD, but there are cheaper ones out there on ebay and aliexpress. I just can't say anything about how well they work or are supported by anyone.
- fluffything 7y ago
  The ESP32 is great. I love this board. The only thing that is missing is good Rust support.
  - AdrianoKF 7y ago
    IIRC, Espressif (the company behind the ESP32) is working on a clang/LLVM port to the Xtensa architecture, which would enable a Rust toolchain.
    - StavrosK 7y ago
      That would be a dream come true for me, but I've been hearing that for a few years, so I don't have much hope.
      - AdrianoKF 7y ago
        They do have an issue for merging their fork back into upstream LLVM in their repo: https://github.com/espressif/llvm-xtensa/issues/8 https://github.com/espressif/llvm-xtensa/issues/8 Not sure how fast that's gonna happen, but one may hope!
- wdfx 7y ago
  I bought a pair of esp8266 off Amazon for about £10 recently; they both look like some sort of knock-off, the PCBs are unbranded and the soldering looks somewhat less than perfect in places - however, both devices function perfectly. (WIP modular synth sequencer: https://photos.app.goo.gl/PcMqnUThygRG3T8v7 https://photos.app.goo.gl/PcMqnUThygRG3T8v7 ) I also have since bought a couple of ESP32 and think they are awesome.
  - codebje 7y ago
    Check the regulators on those cheap boards, they're often well under spec and cause brown-out reboots when the wifi gets working. If you don't use the more power hungry board features they still work fine.
- Ao7bei3s 7y ago
  Spot-on! For the specific purpose of controlling APA102 via wifi, ESP8266 (NodeMCU or similar) seems optimal, as 1x SPI and WiFi are the only peripherals needed and so ESP8266 is a perfect fit hardware-wise, and it's well-supported, extremely beginner friendly (<25 easy lines of code to get these LEDs blinking via WiFi, mouse-click based library download) and cheap. In general, for intermediate users and up (anyone not lost right away without peripheral libraries from SparkFun/AdaFruit), and unless Wifi is needed, I fully agree on ARM. I'd recommend the STM32 portfolio. These scale really well from learning platform to full on commercial use (with the F0/F1/F4/F7 MCU's, stm32duino/libopencm3/mbed frameworks, Arduino/PlatformIO dev environments, all in order of complexity and/or professionalism). The STM32F* eval boards are nice but pricy; there are fewer universally useful cheap small-formfactor (ie Arduino-like) boards.

zaarn 7y ago

Arduino's still have a use, Atmega/Attiny in general, the chips are much cheaper, especially if you don't need connectivity.

simcop2387 7y ago

I'd recommend looking at some of the ARM dev boards instead of the ESP8266 for general purpose stuff and if you need the wifi, the ESP32. This is mostly because the ESP8266 is missing a lot of hardware functionality that you'll find in the ESP32 or any arm boards. In particular UARTs (serial ports), I2C, and SPI periphrials that can make working with other things like the APA102 a lot nicer to code for. With the arm chips you usually even can setup the SPI transfers as DMA so that you don't have to actually do any work on the cpu itself to drive the lights. That said the ESP8266 still has a place because of how cheap you can usually find them. Lowest price arm board that i know of from a manufacturer is the Teensy LC at ~$12USD, but there are cheaper ones out there on ebay and aliexpress. I just can't say anything about how well they work or are supported by anyone.

fluffything 7y ago
The ESP32 is great. I love this board. The only thing that is missing is good Rust support.
- AdrianoKF 7y ago
  IIRC, Espressif (the company behind the ESP32) is working on a clang/LLVM port to the Xtensa architecture, which would enable a Rust toolchain.
  - StavrosK 7y ago
    That would be a dream come true for me, but I've been hearing that for a few years, so I don't have much hope.
    - AdrianoKF 7y ago
      They do have an issue for merging their fork back into upstream LLVM in their repo: https://github.com/espressif/llvm-xtensa/issues/8 https://github.com/espressif/llvm-xtensa/issues/8 Not sure how fast that's gonna happen, but one may hope!
wdfx 7y ago
I bought a pair of esp8266 off Amazon for about £10 recently; they both look like some sort of knock-off, the PCBs are unbranded and the soldering looks somewhat less than perfect in places - however, both devices function perfectly. (WIP modular synth sequencer: https://photos.app.goo.gl/PcMqnUThygRG3T8v7 https://photos.app.goo.gl/PcMqnUThygRG3T8v7 ) I also have since bought a couple of ESP32 and think they are awesome.
- codebje 7y ago
  Check the regulators on those cheap boards, they're often well under spec and cause brown-out reboots when the wifi gets working. If you don't use the more power hungry board features they still work fine.
Ao7bei3s 7y ago
Spot-on! For the specific purpose of controlling APA102 via wifi, ESP8266 (NodeMCU or similar) seems optimal, as 1x SPI and WiFi are the only peripherals needed and so ESP8266 is a perfect fit hardware-wise, and it's well-supported, extremely beginner friendly (<25 easy lines of code to get these LEDs blinking via WiFi, mouse-click based library download) and cheap. In general, for intermediate users and up (anyone not lost right away without peripheral libraries from SparkFun/AdaFruit), and unless Wifi is needed, I fully agree on ARM. I'd recommend the STM32 portfolio. These scale really well from learning platform to full on commercial use (with the F0/F1/F4/F7 MCU's, stm32duino/libopencm3/mbed frameworks, Arduino/PlatformIO dev environments, all in order of complexity and/or professionalism). The STM32F* eval boards are nice but pricy; there are fewer universally useful cheap small-formfactor (ie Arduino-like) boards.