Description
These individually addressable LED strip lights are based on the SK9822 chip, a drop-in-replacement for the extremely popular APA102 (also known as the Dotstar). Just like the APA102, these SK9822 LEDs use generic 2-wire SPI, so you can push data much faster and there’s no specific timing required. They are so similar, that SK9822 can be chained directly inline with APA102 and function normally. The SK9822 improves on the APA102 by featuring voltage-independent color and brightness over a wide voltage range, which means the colors of the LEDs should not be affected by a drop in the supply voltage as much as the older APA102.
The SK9822 are 5050-sized LEDs with an embedded microcontroller inside the LED. You can set the color/brightness of each LED to 24-bit color (8 bits each red green and blue). Each LED acts like a shift register, reading incoming color data on the input pins, and then shifting the previous color data out on the output pin. By sending a long string of data, you can control an infinite number of LEDs, just tack on more or cut off unwanted LEDs at the end. The PWM is built into each LED-chip so once you set the color you can stop talking to the strip and it will continue to PWM all the LEDs for you.
SK9822 LEDs have 2 wires (input and output) for sending data – one clock pin and one data pin. That means you need two pins, not one, to control SK9822 strips. Because the clock and data is separated, you can use any processor speed or type to control these strips, and you don’t have to worry about being careful with the timing. Hardware SPI support is handy but not required. This makes them excellent for use with any microcontroller or microprocessor, including Arduino, Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone, Propeller, SparkCore, and any ‘raw’ microcontrollers/microprocessors. It’s very easy to port the library, and you can send data to the pixels at up to 32MHz clock rate!
Each meter of SK8812 can draw up to 3A at full brightness, so a fairly beefy power supply is required to run anything over a meter. We have 2A, 5A, and 10A 5V power supplies available depending on the size of your installation.
Please Note: Depending on the length of piece ordered, there may be a connector on one end. For orders of 5 meters a single 5 meter piece will be shipped with connectors on both ends. For typical use of less than a complete roll, soldering will be required.