Individually Addressable LEDs vs. Normal LED Strips

The core difference

At a glance, all types of LED strips look very similar, but there are some very key differences which we will describe in this guide.

With a normal RGB LED strip, the entire strip behaves as a single light. Every LED shows the same color at the same time. If you set the strip to blue, the whole strip becomes blue. If you fade it to red, every LED fades together. There is no way to change this behavior as it is based on the circuitry and how the LEDs are physically designed.

Individually addressable LED strips work more like a screen. “Any LED can be set any color at any time”. One LED can be red while the next is green, another blue, the next orange and another off. Because of this, they are often compared to pixels - just like pixels on a display, each LED becomes a small controllable element in a larger visual system.

Why is this useful? We will touch on that in a bit.

“Pixels?” Explained:

If you can now control each LED individually, the strip stops behaving like a lamp and starts behaving like a display surface and a lot of visual possibilities suddenly open up. You can move colors along the strip, create flowing gradients, simulate fire, water, or pulses, or generate rhythmic patterns that respond to music or other inputs like MIDI or sensors.

Even a relatively small strip of 60 LEDs is essentially a 60-pixel light display. When you consider all the possible colors each LED can take on at any moment and how they can move through time, the possibilities quickly hit infinity.

Of course with longer strips or multiple strips arranged in space, you can build surprisingly expressive visual systems.

How normal LED strips work

Standard RGB LED strips are electrically very simple and straightforward.

Inside the strip, all the red LEDs are connected together down the line, and same goes for the blue and green LEDs. The strip usually has four wires:

• Power (V+)
• Red channel
• Green channel
• Blue channel

To change the color, the connected control device simply adjusts the voltage signal going to the red, green, and blue channels. Every LED receives the same signals, so they all show the same color.

This is why these strips can work with very basic controllers. In the simplest case, you could even manually drive the channels with voltage or dimmers.

How individually addressable LEDs work

Individually addressable LEDs take a different approach.

Each LED package contains two things:

• the RGB LED itself
• a very tiny and simple digital chip

This chip listens to a digital data signal that travels down the strip. The signal contains instructions describing what color each LED should display.

When data reaches the first LED, it reads the first set of instructions and sets its color. Then it passes the rest of the signal down to the next LED, which does the same thing. This continues along the entire strip.

Different LED families use slightly different communication methods or protocols. Some common examples include:

• WS2812B
• SK6812
• APA102

From a user perspective the idea is always the same: a stream of digital data tells each LED what color it should be.

Why software is required

One very important consequence of individually addressable LEDs is that they do nothing on their own.

If you simply connect power to the strip, the LEDs will remain off. They are waiting for digital instructions. Something has to generate the control signal that tells each LED what to do. This usually means a microcontroller or dedicated controller that runs software.

That software might create animations, react to music, generate patterns, or respond to sensors. The LEDs themselves are just the display surface.

This is exactly where systems like MAINFRAME come into play. Instead of manually programming animations, the device generates the streams of instructions that drive the LEDs in real-time, in this case, based on your MIDI and parameter settings.

One key design consideration

Each LED you have control over takes precious resources (processing time and memory) which means you cannot connect an infinite number of LEDs to your system especially if you want real-time behavior. There is always a max number of LEDs (for MAINFRAME-B it is currently 480 LEDs) and this number is usually a design choice dependent on a number of factors.

We found there’s a trade-off between:

• Total number of LEDs
• Complexity of color and pattern
• Framerate
• Data rate

We could have theoretically increased the total number of LEDs or the framerate (for MAINFRAME-B it is currently at 30fps), but then you have to sacrifice and simplify the animations or the data rate. The balance we have struck currently has been carefully tuned to fulfill the intended applications and design philosophy of the product.

Which is better?

Both types of strips have their place, and one is not always better than the other.

Normal RGB strips are simple, inexpensive, commonly available and ideal when you just want uniform colored lighting. They work well for architectural lighting, accent lighting, or situations where the whole strip should behave like a single light source.

Individually addressable LEDs are much more expressive. They allow movement, patterns, visual rhythm, and detail. Because every LED is independently controllable, the strip becomes less like lighting and more like a programmable visual medium.

If you want motion, texture, or interaction, individually addressable LEDs are almost always the better (and more fun) choice. However, you must craft the hardware/software and the experience yourself, which can make it difficult at times. This is where MAINFRAME-B comes in!