FastLED
This is a library for easily & efficiently controlling a wide variety of LED chipsets, like the ones sold by adafruit (Neopixel, DotStar, LPD8806), Sparkfun (WS2801), and aliexpress. In addition to writing to the leds, this library also includes a number of functions for high-performing 8bit math for manipulating your RGB values, as well as low level classes for abstracting out access to pins and SPI hardware, while still keeping things as fast as possible. Tested with Arduino up to 1.6.5 from arduino.cc.
Quick note for people installing from GitHub repo zips, rename the folder FastLED before copying it to your Arduino/libraries folder. Github likes putting -branchname into the name of the folder, which unfortunately, makes Arduino cranky!
We have multiple goals with this library:
- Quick start for new developers - hook up your leds and go, no need to think about specifics of the led chipsets being used
- Zero pain switching LED chipsets - you get some new leds that the library supports, just change the definition of LEDs you're using, et. voila! Your code is running with the new leds.
- High performance - with features like zero cost global brightness scaling, high performance 8-bit math for RGB manipulation, and some of the fastest bit-bang'd SPI support around, FastLED wants to keep as many CPU cycles available for your led patterns as possible
