Since all the controllers and hubs are at least 2 to 3 months away (due to long lead times on some items), I decided to see if I could bit bang up a simple controller.......... Nothing fancy just something to turn on all the pixels to reassure myself that my pixel purchase performed......... (Actually just modified a standard blink program)
Unfortunately we have just moved office and most of my development stuff is in storage, so I unearthed an Arduino board (16Mhz ATmega238) and had a play. The Arduino compiler is pretty ineffiecient and is really too slow to succesfully talk the TM180X protocol, but if you use the fast Input Output library it almost gets into the ballpark figures from the datasheet.
Much to my surprise both the strips and rectangular pixels I tested are quite happy with the pulse stream, and turn all the pixels on. Don't leave it on at 100% for too long whilst reeled up, it gets really hot really quickly............
Be careful with the wire connections, the wire colours are different for the strips and the rectangular pixels........ and of course make sure you put the pulse stream into the Din pin and not the Dout pin. My strips came with the Input wires at the inner part of the reel
