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Because I can google “How to drive addressable LEDs from Raspberry Pi”, for example, and find a lot of example projects and blog posts and not have to reinvent
by cillian64 5y ago
Because I can google “How to drive addressable LEDs from Raspberry Pi”, for example, and find a lot of example projects and blog posts and not have to reinvent the wheel. It’s inelegant for sure, but great for prototyping or duct tape projects where you want to stand on the shoulders of others and just get something working quickly.
- megous 5y agoYou can google the exact same phrase and just use the Rpi solution/code on any other Linux based SBC, because gpio has a standard userspace API on Linux. All you change is pin mapping at most. Though yeah, if you don't care about the SBC capabilities at all, and your goal is to just drive some LEDs from Linux, you can just as well buy whatever is familiar to you, regardless of any shortcomings.
- monocasa 5y agoThe addressable LEDs aren't typically just bit banging GPIOs. There's no clock line with common protocols in the space like the WS2812, and they're very susceptible to jitter. Twiddling GPIOs from user space is basically a non starter. I've had success though with using the MOSI line from a SPI master and carefully crafting the bit pattern and timing to get the waveform I want. It takes some manual work though, more than what you get from user space.