Is WS2812 the same as WS2811 or PL9823 ?

fdaniels

Well-known member
I love Blinkenlights but i got confused:

are WS2811 or PL9823 LEDs (im specially interested in 5mm or even 3mm Versions) compatible with the WS2812 and can i use the W2812Serial Library with these?

Any input appreciated,
thanks! ,
Frank
 
The short answer is yes, for all practical purposes they're the same. All should work fine.

2 minor caveats:

Some very early (like ~9 years ago) WS2811 used half speed 400 kHz bit rate. Adafruit sold some long ago, so you'll usually see them mentioned in Adafruit's tutorials, even though they're pretty much ancient history now.

Most of this stuff comes from Chinese vendors who generally ship working stuff, but counterfeits and mislabeled substitutions are the norm rather than the exception. For example, LED strips I've bought all claiming to be WS2812B have obviously different chips inside when viewed under a microscope. Software compatibility isn't really an issue, but if you're building a big LED project, I highly recommend buying plenty of spare LEDs at the time of your initial order. If you try to buy replacement parts months or years later, you'll probably get something that works fine, but whether it is optically similar enough is an open question.
 
Paul,
thanks for the quick response!

I just tried to save me the hassle of multiple 595s for driving all the LEDs in my next Project and one single PIN to drive approx 30 LEDs + they all can be RGB now looks pretty promising. I guess the 5050 form factor wont change?

If i now find a Pushbutton that works the same i a lucky man :rolleyes:
 
A few other things about WS2812Bs from multiple vendors:
  • In a single strand, you can only have RGB or RGBW WS2812B's. The RGBW's (which have a dedicated white led) use the same protocol, but transfer 4 bytes of color information instead of 3 per led. Note, that not all libraries support the RGBW variety. You can typically tell a RGBW because it looks like two half circles (one being the RGB LED part and the other the being the white LED part).
  • Different vendors have different ideas about the order of the colors transmitted. I've bought some WS2812B leds where I had to tinker with the initialization to get the colors right (there is an option to specify the order). Generally, I do a short startup sequence where I do make all of the LEDs red, delay, then green, delay, and then blue. Then I can use that to adjust the setup.
  • The pinout for the wires can be different. And even if the vendors use the same plug (such as one of the common 3-pin JST plugs), it might vary whether a male plug is used to plug into the microprocessor or female plug. In particular, Adafruit tends to use male plugs while some of the LEDs I've bought from Amazon/ebay use a female plug.
  • WS2812B's can be sensitive about voltage. Some can be powered by 3.3v (as long as you keep the power down), others need at least 3.7v. If you power the LEDs at 5v, you may or may not need to use a level shifter to convert the Teensy 3.3v data to 5v. If you use a level shifter, get one that is fast enough for WS2812B/neopixels (the common shifters made for i2c/spi/uart aren't fast enough for WS2812B).
  • While the 5050 form factor is the most common, I have seen some pixels using different form factors.
  • Vendors do change strands over time. They do not always change the datasheet listing the details.
 
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