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Why would you use this instead if some rpi version?
by turbobooster 4y ago
Why would you use this instead if some rpi version?
- riskable 4y agoBetter embedded GPIO. RPi Zero is a great little board/computer but the capabilities of the GPIO pins are lacking in a lot of ways. Speed being the biggest problem. This little $8 board will run circles around even an RPi 4 when it comes to doing something like controlling a long strip of ws2812b RGB LEDs, as an example.
- wenus 4y ago>run circles around even an RPi 4 when it comes to doing something like controlling a long strip of ws2812b RGB LEDs Why would a Raspberry Pi have any issue with this?
- monocasa 4y agoLinux and it's lack of hard real time functionality. ws2812b's don't have a clock signal and instead rely on relatively tight timing of the data to seperate the bits. So you end up having to write a kernel driver to either disable interrupts as you bit bang GPIO, or take over a SPI device and set it up with nasty parameters to get a ws2812b waveform out of the MOSI data line. This chip can simply dedicate one of the MCU cores to the task of babysitting that interface.
- TJSomething 4y agoCurrently, RPis are quite difficult to obtain and have been since 2020. I was just looking at a project design that required 2 RPi Zero 2 Ws and I'm currently considering alternatives. Unfortunately, the software stack is Java, so I don't think this will work.