RGBW 4 Channel support

#1

Are there any future plans for an RGBW version of the BlinkStickPro?

#2

I will have to check. There is a limit on the amount of pins available on the ATTiny85. Do you have a link to the led strip that I could look at and see if it would be possible to integrate? Is it a regular LED strip where all LEDs light up with the same color?

#3

I originally had something like this this analog strip in mind when I asked this question.

Kind of a tangent, but I then went on to find a digital addressable strip. Am I right in assuming that I could control it using a BlinkStick with an adaptation of the software to send the right bit strings? Would the firmware support it?

Also to clarify, from what I’ve read on your site, mode 2 of the BlinkStick pro has a 64 LED limitation for (parralel?) addressable indexing. I can still send data serially using mode 0/1, right?

I’m a software engineer who hasn’t done much controls programming, so sorry if I’m asking silly questions. Also, I’ll definitely be using an external power supply.

#4

The analog strip could be controlled with 2 BlinkStick Pros, but I can’t guarantee that your linked digital LED strip will work. BlinkStick Pro supports WS2812 LEDs so if you can find an LED strip with them, then you shouldn’t have any problems controlling it with BlinkStick Pro.

Mode 2 of BlinkStick Pro makes all R, G and B channels digital. This means that you can connect up to 64 LEDs on each channel and they are usually connected in series on the LED strip. Mode 0/1 is only for analogue strips where each channel is used to control R, G and B colors for the whole analog strip at once.

You can find more details on how to connect digital WS2812 based LED strips by following this tutorial:

https://www.blinkstick.com/help/tutorials/blinkstick-pro-adafruit-neopixel-strips

#5

Thanks for the info. Is there any possible way to control, say, a strip of 300 WS2812 LEDs with the BlinkStick? Is there a way to send raw data to the strip with your API? Why is there a 64 LED limit?

#6

You can only control 3 strips of 64 WS2812 LEDs with a single BlinkStick Pro. This is due to RAM limitation on the device.

All supported API implementations allow sending raw data to the LED strip as an array or GRB values.