4 Wire 12V Native Pixels

Hi just saw a video by Greg Macaree on 4 wire 12v Native pixels that looks good and covers the problems of having a bad pixel with the back up data keeping the string working and has a lower wattage use than 5 Volt pixels which would reduce the need to Power Inject, he found his pixel at 12V to be 0.19 Watts per pixel
I think this is the way I will be going in the future, just need to wait and see if they will be PRE BUY on sale this year for them



View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbWpOXAheNo

Paul had some 4 wire pixels last year in the pre-buy, and I believe John at Ink Creations has some as well.
I got some of the seed pixel 4-wire variants in 2024 and had 0 complaints.

(Someone correct me if I'm wrong here - my understanding is that gs8208 is quite efficient at full white - but it's when it's only using 1 colour (or no colours) that the power tradeoff kicks in) I have been corrected below

thewanderingpine said:

(Someone correct me if I'm wrong here - my understanding is that gs8208 is quite efficient at full white - but it's when it's only using 1 colour (or no colours) that the power tradeoff kicks in)

Click to expand...

On a single LED colour, the power scales fine between 0 and 100% (subject to gamma curve) .
The difference with GS8208 is it's not additive between the three colours, it's essentially the greatest of the 3.

Making an assumption of 16mA per colour - we can do some calculations to see how the behaviour is different between the two. (Note that GS8208 is up to 18mA, resistor 12V are generally capped due to the overly-large resistors)

So consider the following orange colour- Red = 100%, Green = 50%, Blue = 20%

WS2811 =
Red = 16mA x 100% = 16mA
Green = 16mA x 50% = 8mA
Blue = 16mA x 20% = 3.2mA
Total = 16+8+3.2 = 27.2mA total

GS8208 - the calculations are the same
Red = 16mA x 100% = 16mA
Green = 16mA x 50% = 8mA
Blue = 16mA x 20% = 3.2mA
But the total is MAX(16,8,3.2) = 16mA

And for full white:
WS2811 =
Red = 16mA x 100% = 16mA
Green = 16mA x 50% = 16mA
Blue = 16mA x 20% = 16mA
Total = 16+16+16 = 48mA total

GS8208 -
Red = 16mA x 100% = 16mA
Green = 16mA x 50% = 16mA
Blue = 16mA x 20% = 16mA
But the total is MAX(16,16,16) = 16mA

So you can see that between the bright orange and the full white, the power usage is the same for GS8208..... however is 76% higher for WS2811.
Essentially the most you'll ever draw from GS8208 is 16mA (again, using that assumption, which is not 100% accurate)

The trade-off, however, is that 12V resistor pixels will run down to around 6-7V before having colour issues due to voltage drop. GS8208 does require a much higher voltage - 9V - due to the series arrangement of the LEDs on the chip.


Also - the above calcs apply to GS8208 - some of the seeds being WS2808 or WS2815 etc have different behaviours again; and different power requirements.

Said in the simplest way, the GS and other series designs always use the same or less power, so no tradeoff. (Because the same current goes through all three, it's the max of the three, rather than the sum. The sum can be the same as the max, or up to 3x as much). Give or take that some pixels run at lower current and produce less light. (The GS8208 is always lower power than 12V regulated for any given color, and usually less than the 12V resistor, but the GS8208 is brighter than resistor at 100%.)

But, I think the cumulative power consumption isn't what people are after. (Well someone probably is, but in that case I'd say look at standby power, as your pixels are usually dark, even in a reasonably active show... Also $.20-$.30 will get you the pixel, or many thousands of hours of full white, depending on your pixel and power rates.) People are generally after the total design power, so as to save time and money on PSUs, cables, etc. The total design power for the GS8208, WS2808, etc., is a lot less than 12V parallel designs, so what you spend extra on the pixel you'll probably save in wire, PSU capacity, etc.

I'd also mention that wire thickness is a bit limiting on some of the available GS8208s, the ones I have, the 4 wires are thinner than the 3 on most WS2811s. This hurts how many you can run without PI... they need to be less than 100 from power for full white. But, if you want, I think you can turn the little knob on the Mean Well to 13 or even 14 and be fine ;-). Based on the small test of a bit over 300 pixels for 100 hours in 2023 Halloween show to see what would happen. I have not tried this with the 12V seeds, gumdrops, or 2808s... yet...

is the WS28 better power wise in a RGBW config?

Skymaster said:

The trade-off, however, is that 12V resistor pixels will run down to around 6-7V before having colour issues due to voltage drop. GS8208 does require a much higher voltage - 9V - due to the series arrangement of the LEDs on the chip.

Click to expand...

This is an old thread but wanted to add some clarification. 12V resistor pixels that operate at less than 18mA per LED have inaccurate colour at their intended operating voltage of 12V. The resistor values that are typically used with 12V resistor pixels force the ws2811 LED constant current regulators into saturation and the LED current becomes voltage dependent. Any change to the applied voltage changes the LED current and therefore changes the light intensity which affects the perceived colour. Operating the pixels at a reduced brightness masks the voltage dependency of the colour to some degree.

steves said:

Any change to the applied voltage changes the LED current and therefore changes the light intensity which affects the perceived colour.

Click to expand...

What you said is technically true ... as the voltage drops the pixels may look a touch warm (but for resistors, more likely a touch green), but good luck noticing that in the show. With resistor pixels, the current used is proportional to the sum of R+G+B, so the only way to get full voltage drop is to go full white, which never lasts very long. Anything else (full red) has no color imbalance to perceive, but also has 1/3 of the drop.

You still have people out there that didn't set the gamma, they're never going to notice.

I realize this is an old thread,

But adding commentary to an old topic; I lost interest in the RGBW configuration once I realized that it consumes more channels/less pixels.

They say you understand something when you can explain it back to another person, which I can't yet.

What makes the GS8208 draw a maximum current of the highest of the three individual RGB LEDs, rather than the cumulation of the three RGB LEDs?

I can't for the life of me understand how or why that works that way...

ThomasCee said:

What makes the GS8208 draw a maximum current of the highest of the three individual RGB LEDs, rather than the cumulation of the three RGB LEDs?

I can't for the life of me understand how or why that works that way...

Click to expand...

I can say how and why. With the resistor, regulator, and 5V designs, yes, it is 3 parallel current streams. However, at 12V, using ~3V for the typical LED wastes 75% of the volts as heat. Instead, the same stream of current goes through the red, green, and blue LEDs. If the color is supposed to be off, then the current is routed around that LED color, through a bypass shunt. This manages to use ~9V out of 12, much more efficient. So "series" is how, and "efficiency" is why. This also explains why the current is the maximum needed for any one color (in fact, full single color may use a smidge more if the resistance of the shunts around the other colors is less than the LEDs they bypass).