Matrix - 30 WS2812b Strips of 54 LEDs

Questions
1

Any advice or guidance would be hugely welcome. Please let me know if any further images, diagrams or explanations are needed…

So, I’ve decided to convert an LED matrix project that is currently using 4 Fadecandy Driver boards to be controlled by WLED.

The Matrix currently has 30 WS2812B Strips of 54 LEDs connected in parallel. (30 positive wires to the power supply, 30 data wires to the Fadecandy boards, 30 ground split between the power supply and Fadecandy boards. Connections are similar to this diagram.

I’m interested to find out what hardware would be recommended to control these strips with WLED.

Idea 1.
The QuinLED-Dig-Quad goes up to 4 channels, so I thought it may be possible to connect up the data of 8 strips together to make one channel and repeat this to cover all 30 strips (3 channels of 8 strips, 1 channel of 6 strips).

Cheers
Matt

2

If you use an ESP32, you would get the best performance from no more than 512 LEDs per pin. Four seems perfect.

2 Likes
3

I’ll 2nd @tonyno, the power requirements don’t change and can remain as is.

If you merge your strips you’ll have a much easier time managing 4 segments vs. 30.
Definitely go with an ESP32 based board to keep the performance up.

1 Like
4

Thank you so much to both of you @tonyno and @divsys for your replies!