Hi community,
I was hacking one of Govee outdoor LED lights, and, because it’s WS2811, it works with WLED. But it has 15 bulbs and 30 LEDs, and every second LED is (warm-)white, but addressable, and every other LED is a normal RGB one.
Does WLED support such setup? I mean using nearby LED for brightness/white balance. For now, I’ve remapped all LEDs into two segments: RGB and White, but it’s quite sub-optimal.
Thanks,
May I can see a picture of that?
As well as a description or link to that product so that I can do ainspection
Here we go:
(Okay, now I’ve realized that even description says it’s Warm White + RGB). See the photo attached. Both chips on left/right side are the same WS2811
If I’m getting it right is uses one chip for white, the another for RGB?
Is that correct?
That’s correct
Does it use 3 wire protocol or has it a separate line for White data?
With that information I could decide what to do next
Yes, it uses 3 wire protocol. See the screenshot for the config I now use.
Then, to make working, I either remap LED via
{
"map":[0,2,4,6,8,10,12,14,16,18,20,22,24,26,28,1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19,21,23,25,27,29]
}
and then make two segments, 15 LEDs each or it’s also possible to do that without remapping, by using overlapping segments and spacing
Hey, that’s quite interesting!
I’ve never seen a dual chipset setup in a single housing for addressable LEDs before.
Does the ws2811 not typically have three channels for RGB?
I suggest for now mapping might be your best solution right now, even though it’s not the ideal method.
Another option could be trying to cut off the addressable white section if it’s not needed.
Unless you want to keep white
The use of the Ws2811 chipset for white is somewhat unusual, so there may not be other solutions available yet.
You might want to consider asking the developers about this and maybe providing an update on the situation.
This will hopefully bring you further!
Regards,
Gabriel
From that photo, I can see 2xWS2811 drivers, but 4 LED elements, 2 RGB (centre “white”) and 2 WW (centre “yellow”).
Each WS2811 can drive 3 channels, typically R, G, B but it’s possible to attach any colour LED to any channel (even WW). The chip has no idea what’s attached, it just outputs the current request you send via the data stream for each channel.
Probably the pairs of RGB and WW LEDs are put in series so they can run at higher voltage (helps eliminate voltage drops). The RGB LEDs are driven by 1 chip using RGB channels and the WW are driven by a single channel (one of the RGB) on the 2nd chip.
You can test by varying the Red only on one of the “white” LEDs in your segment (the odd ones?) and then try varying Green only and Blue only. You should see one of the RGB channels controls the brightness of the WW and the others do nothing.
One last possibility: there’s more circuitry on the back side of the board, we can’t see.
You can test by varying the Red only on one of the “white” LEDs in your segment (the odd ones?) and then try varying Green only and Blue only
No, it doesn’t work that way. Any single channel color (R, G, B) gives the same brightness on the “white” segment, any pair (C, M, Y) gives slightly brighter light, and white is the brightest.
Last weekend I’ve migrated one more Govee outdoor LED string to WLED, of different model, and its setup is even more challenging: it again has two chips/LEDs per unit, but White LED’s brightness is inverted: it’s OFF when brightness is 100% and OFF when 0%.
Govee probably simply optimizes their designs, using same WS2811 chips, controllers, wires for many products, even by using additional WS2811 chips to white-only LEDs.
I can live with two segments, one for RGB another for White, the real limitation is that I can’t get the full brightness/contrast when White segment is OFF, and it’s quite tricky to use any effect utilizing both segments. Solid colors are easier, as I can tune both segments to get the desired color/brightness.
So it would be great to somehow compensate brightness of each RGB LED with the neighbor white LED in more automated way.
WLED may not support it yet, but NeoPixelBus the underlying library it uses does. Look for a color order like Rgbwxx.
