NeoPixel products
NeoPixels are a brand of a range of related products manufactured by Adafruit (https://www.adafruit.com/category/168). They are based on individual LEDs (WS2812, WS2811, and SK6812). These LEDs are Red, Green, and Blue (RGB) or Red, Green, Blue, and White (RGBW)-colored LEDs. They use the Single Wire Protocol for communication. Let’s understand what it is. As you may recall, in Chapter 6, Interfacing External LEDs, we interfaced the Micro:bit board with RGB LEDs with four pins (one for each color and one for a common anode or common cathode). This circuit configuration can only support a limited number of RGB LEDs with the Micro:bit (or any board/device for that matter) as it has a limited number of GPIO pins that can be used for digital I/O. So, the drawbacks of this configuration are as follows:
- Utilization of too many pins
- Cannot support more RGB LEDs
- Must write separate code blocks to handle each LED
NeoPixel only uses one GPIO pin...
