Addressable LED strip with more than 144 LEDs/meter?

[ebastler]

For a custom display, I am looking for strips of fully addressable LEDs (WS2813 or similar) in a fine-pitch arrangement. 144 LEDs/m seems to be the maximum for the common 5x5 mm² package. But that's pushing it for my application; I would prefer 200 LEDs/m or more. Lower brightness and smaller source diameter would be fine.

Are there similar products in smaller packages and higher packing densities which I have overlooked? Thanks for any hints you might have!

[nAyPDJ]

Google for "WS2812B 2020 strip". I came across this site which has a good selection of 200LED/m, although it is sketchy to me how they use an American flag in the title bar when they are a Chinese company...

[ebastler]

Thank you!!  

So they do make them in smaller packages, as I had hoped. But I did not guess the right "2020" package size, and they seem somewhat uncommon so nothing popped up in my various search attempts.

Even the WS2813 is available in a 2020 package. That's the version with the redundant backup data line, which I would prefer to get better robustness. Now on to looking for a ready-made strip with these...

EDIT: Looks like the same shop has the WS2813-2020 version too, mounted on strips with 200 LEDs/m. Thank you once more!

[mariush]

TME.eu has 2020 leds ... but it's not cheaper than the site above, around 441 eur / 475 usd for 4500 leds... basically 100$ for 1000 leds ... your spool of 5 meters is 85$ so a bit cheaper.

They're ws2816b though, they can do 16 bit per color, and higher refresh rate (10kHz) so that may be a benefit

example 1 : https://www.tme.eu/gb/details/ws2816b-2020/smd-colour-leds/worldsemi/

example 2 : https://www.tme.eu/gb/details/ws2816b-2121/smd-colour-leds/worldsemi/

You could probably make your own pcbs at jlcpcb or other places ... for example have them do 50cm by 50cm board and optionally have it v-scored every 5mm and you'll have 10  500mm by 5mm boards to put one led in every 5 x 5 cell, so you have 200 leds per meter.

Or make your board a 64 x 64 square or something like that, using 4mm x 4mm cells for each led and put headers on back to connect each tile to the other... with 4mm you'd get ~250 leds per meter....  for example 4 tiles of 64 x 64 to get 256 leds in one meter.

[ebastler]

Thank you too! They also have the WS2813C-2020, it turns out: https://www.tme.eu/gb/details/ws2813c-2020/smd-colour-leds/worldsemi/.

But all their WS LEDs are the loose SMD parts, not mounted on strips. I will need to mount ~1000 LEDs on a cylindric surface, and potentially some individual lines of LEDs spaced far apart on a large display board; and this will be a one-off. So the adhesive strips would be quite convenient.

I have sent "SuperLightingLED", the vendor found by nAyPDJ, a technical enquiry. If they come back with a decent response -- potentially in a few days, after CNY -- I will order from them, I think.

[ebastler]

Just a quick follow-up: SuperLightingLED did provide a prompt and helpful response to my question. (And an honest one, pointing out that longer strips do have cuts and solder joints.) So far I feel good with them as a supplier for this somewhat uncommon type of 2020-size LED strip.