Question about implementation - SPI?

[ole00]

Question about implementation - SPI?

[cpldcpu]

Hi,
Yes, indeed, one could use a SPI peripheral to emulate the WS2812 protocol as you describe. There are also some examples out there that do this on an AVR. On slower MCUs, and especially with out DMA, there is not a lot of benefit of using SPI, compared to bitbanging, because the CPU is basically busy all the time waiting to feed the SPI register.

On 32 bit MCUs, SPI+DMA is usually the best way to implement the WS2812 protocol. There are also many other approaches, using programme periphery. I especially like the PIO in the new RP2040.

[ole00]

I should have done more investigation about WS LED's - you blog article about WS timing is now 8 years old, and - as you just wrote - other solutions were devised in the meantime. Your blog article about WS LEDS is still one of the first on the list from google search though, and rightfully so as it has plenty of interesting info. Maybe it's time to write the 3rd blog article listing other implementation approaches. One of the person on the blog's discussion mentioned PWM, which is also interesting idea. I found the blog discussion after I raised this github 'issue', one person also mentioned SPI (without further details) .

Thanks for the answer and for sharing your research.