Basic Schematic for Multiple WS2812 Neopixel Strings-Pixelblaze Capacity

[jeff]

Welcome!

This is a topic I feel a little embarrassed about - I wish I remembered more of my undergrad for the fundamentals. But let me share a recent story that covers your situation and matches my experience as well:

Flashing mirrored symmetry

My experience playing with splitting a signal between a couple of 200 LED strips was that there was enough level drop or interference introduced by a Y-cable splitter to cause intermittent weird behavior. (We’re pretty much at radio frequencies – does the Y cause reflections or standing waves that occasionally add up to data errors? If it’s not plain voltage drop, would a little filtering on each leg of the Y help?) Anyway, that project is returned to the queue for the moment, but I was think…

So you’ll want to google “'SPI splitters”. Note that most of these devices don’t spec their max bandwidth, so while most Neopixels and SPI or DMX splitters are good under 0.5Mbps, you might need a different type of splitter for APA102/SK9822/Dotstar.