Ws2812b vs Ws2813. Is it better?
- Thread starter Lishfish
- Start date
Kitman
Full time elf
I am not sure if anyone else has gotten any WS2813 strip but I did get a few rolls last year to use on my wire frame sleigh, however they didn't work with my controller's all Sandevice controllers. I haven't taken these to anyone elses place yet to test them out on any other controller to see if they work but I might use the Adelaide get together to test them on some other controllers and see if they work.
They are meant to be compatible with all other formats however I had to get Jim from Sandevice to update the firmware of the board to support the ws2813 strip and they do now work on that controller.
In theory it's a great idea, if 1 of the leds dies then only that led stops working and doesn't affect any others, since I am yet to use mine I haven't had the ability to test anything out on them yet but once I do all of my testing I can report back.
They are meant to be compatible with all other formats however I had to get Jim from Sandevice to update the firmware of the board to support the ws2813 strip and they do now work on that controller.
In theory it's a great idea, if 1 of the leds dies then only that led stops working and doesn't affect any others, since I am yet to use mine I haven't had the ability to test anything out on them yet but once I do all of my testing I can report back.
Kitman
Full time elf
I had to have more than 1 ws2811 between the controller and the strip for the strip to work. Having 50 ws2811 pixels between the controller and strip worked having 1 didn't.
Jim updated the SanDevices firmware in 5.023 to support WS2813 and WS2818. It works thereafter.
I had 6 x WS2813 strips and about 80x WS2818 strings running last year. (The WS2818 is the string version of the WS2813).
They're not a perfect solution.
The WS2818's I had were very unreliable and I had 100's of individual LEDs out (i.e. a Green or Blue LED, never a RED, and never a full pixel). But I don't think that had to do with the WS2818 as much as the manufacturing of those particular strings. Still trying to figure it out.
Anyway, that's not so much the issue - the problem that the WS2813 addresses is whether a whole string will go out if an individual pixel goes out.
Well, I had 3 whole strings fail under cold weather, 2 x WS2813 and one WS2818. They came back on later when it was warmer. You get that sometimes with WS2811/WS2812 as well.
And I didn't have a pixel failure condition, which is what an ideal WS2813 / WS2818 failure will look like. So basically the WS2813/WS2818 didn't help or prevent any failures that a WS2811/WS2812 wouldn't have.
I've posted this as well on another forum:
"The bad part is that on the strings I have "Backup" is placed between "Ground" and "V+", which is literally the worst place they could have placed it. This means that if water & impurities enter the pixel it is very likely to take out Backup Output. Keep in mind that most rain-related failures we encounter isn't generally microchip failures - it's impurities that bridge 2 points on the pixel motherboard and keeping Data high or low as a result. That's why Corrosion X reverses the damage. If would have made more sense if the wiring was G/V+/D/B. Still lots of failure opportunities, but not as much. I've proved this theory by experiment - I have injected several WS2818 pixels with a saltwater/iron solution, and once a pixel goes down as a result, it takes out everything down the string as well. It's pretty hard getting a WS2818 to fail in a way that the rest of the string still work. So far I've only been able to do this by cutting the Data wire - but that's not a general problem I need to protect against. I know in theory if the chip actually fails the string will still work, but on pixels I don't think chips actually fail. On strips however, chips tend to unsolder themselves from the strip, and for those it WOULD make a difference."
I had 6 x WS2813 strips and about 80x WS2818 strings running last year. (The WS2818 is the string version of the WS2813).
They're not a perfect solution.
The WS2818's I had were very unreliable and I had 100's of individual LEDs out (i.e. a Green or Blue LED, never a RED, and never a full pixel). But I don't think that had to do with the WS2818 as much as the manufacturing of those particular strings. Still trying to figure it out.
Anyway, that's not so much the issue - the problem that the WS2813 addresses is whether a whole string will go out if an individual pixel goes out.
Well, I had 3 whole strings fail under cold weather, 2 x WS2813 and one WS2818. They came back on later when it was warmer. You get that sometimes with WS2811/WS2812 as well.
And I didn't have a pixel failure condition, which is what an ideal WS2813 / WS2818 failure will look like. So basically the WS2813/WS2818 didn't help or prevent any failures that a WS2811/WS2812 wouldn't have.
I've posted this as well on another forum:
"The bad part is that on the strings I have "Backup" is placed between "Ground" and "V+", which is literally the worst place they could have placed it. This means that if water & impurities enter the pixel it is very likely to take out Backup Output. Keep in mind that most rain-related failures we encounter isn't generally microchip failures - it's impurities that bridge 2 points on the pixel motherboard and keeping Data high or low as a result. That's why Corrosion X reverses the damage. If would have made more sense if the wiring was G/V+/D/B. Still lots of failure opportunities, but not as much. I've proved this theory by experiment - I have injected several WS2818 pixels with a saltwater/iron solution, and once a pixel goes down as a result, it takes out everything down the string as well. It's pretty hard getting a WS2818 to fail in a way that the rest of the string still work. So far I've only been able to do this by cutting the Data wire - but that's not a general problem I need to protect against. I know in theory if the chip actually fails the string will still work, but on pixels I don't think chips actually fail. On strips however, chips tend to unsolder themselves from the strip, and for those it WOULD make a difference."
It seems that you pay more for a failure condition that is not too common as the back up will only work in certain conditions. The more common issue is actually loosing a colour rather than the chip itself failing
jerciosk6812
Jercioled
As I know, ws2813 is ws2812 updated version, and SK6813 is SK6812 updated version, all have break-point continue function.
WS2813 Feature:
The control circuit and the LED share the only power source.
The control circuit and RGB chip are integrated in a 5050 components, to form an external control pixel.
Using the built-in signal reshaping circuit to achieve the signal waveform shaping, and no distortion of waveform of signal takes place.
Built-in power-on reset and brown-out reset circuits.
The gray levels of each pixel are of 256 levels, which achieves “256256256=16777216” full-color display, and the refresh frequency reaches to 2KHz/s
Serial cascade interface, data receiving and decoding depend on just one signal line.
Dual-signal wires version, signal break-point continuous transmission
Any two point the distance more than 3m transmission signal without any increase circuit.
When the refresh rate is 30fps, cascade numbers are far more than 1024 points.
Data transmitting at speeds of up to 800Kbps.
WS2813 Feature:
The control circuit and the LED share the only power source.
The control circuit and RGB chip are integrated in a 5050 components, to form an external control pixel.
Using the built-in signal reshaping circuit to achieve the signal waveform shaping, and no distortion of waveform of signal takes place.
Built-in power-on reset and brown-out reset circuits.
The gray levels of each pixel are of 256 levels, which achieves “256256256=16777216” full-color display, and the refresh frequency reaches to 2KHz/s
Serial cascade interface, data receiving and decoding depend on just one signal line.
Dual-signal wires version, signal break-point continuous transmission
Any two point the distance more than 3m transmission signal without any increase circuit.
When the refresh rate is 30fps, cascade numbers are far more than 1024 points.
Data transmitting at speeds of up to 800Kbps.
Barnabybear
New elf
Hi, I have a theory that World Semi have stopped manufacturing the WS2811 / WS2812 IC internals and are now shipping with the WS2818 / WS2813 IC internals but only breaking out one set of data terminals. It‘s a bit of a no brainer if you think about it, why manufacture two IC internals if one will do and just miss out some wires when packaging. There are only two things the user would notice:
The data refresh time would be increased to 280uS (it has).
There would be less flicker due to the 2KHz refresh rate (I haven’t got any to wave around in front of a camera to compare).
If this is correct any concerns about reliability would equally apply to WS2811, WS2812, WS2813 & WS2818, so you have to decide if the cost is worth the extra set of data pins.
The data refresh time would be increased to 280uS (it has).
There would be less flicker due to the 2KHz refresh rate (I haven’t got any to wave around in front of a camera to compare).
If this is correct any concerns about reliability would equally apply to WS2811, WS2812, WS2813 & WS2818, so you have to decide if the cost is worth the extra set of data pins.