RP2040 with PIO and DMA to address WS2812B LEDs

I love the WS2812B (aka SK6812) addressable LEDs: they are inexpensive and available in different packages. I have used them in different projects, including the MetaClockClock one. I used the NXP Kinetis for these projects, but because they are not available any more, for a new project we had to choose a new microcontroller, with the Raspberry Pi Pico RP2040 as the winner.

Raspberry Pi Pico RP2040 driving WS2812B with PIO and DMA
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3D Printed Adafruit NeoPixel LED Frames

I’m experimenting with different 3D printed LED frames printed with ABS (see “Avoid Warping ABS on Ultimaker 2“). I frame multiple Adadfruit 8×8 NeoPixel WS2812B LED modules with 3D printed diffuser and frames to create color effects:

Diffuser with Frame Effect

Diffuser with Frame Effect

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Tutorial: Adafruit WS2812B NeoPixels with the Freescale FRDM-K64F Board – Part 5: DMA

This is Part 5 of a Mini Series. In Part 4, I described how to set up the FTM (Kinetis Flex Timer Module) to generate the required waveforms used for DMA operations (see “Tutorial: Adafruit WS2812B NeoPixels with the Freescale FRDM-K64F Board – Part 4: Timer“). In this post I describe how to use to trigger DMA (Direct To Memory) events. The goal is to drive Adafruit’s NeoPixel (WS2812B) with the Freescale FRDM-K64F board:

FRDM-K64F with Adafruit NeoPixel

FRDM-K64F with Adafruit NeoPixel

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Tutorial: Adafruit WS2812B NeoPixels with the Freescale FRDM-K64F Board – Part 4: Timer

This is Part 4 of a Mini Series. In Part 3, I described the software concepts (see “Tutorial: Adafruit WS2812B NeoPixels with the Freescale FRDM-K64F Board – Part 3: Concepts“). In this post I describe how to set-up the timer to trigger later DMA operations. The goal is to drive Adafruit’s NeoPixel (WS2812B) with the Freescale FRDM-K64F board:

NeoPixels with FRDM-K64F

NeoPixels with FRDM-K64F

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