WS2812 interface for the Raspberry Pi 5

This is a simple interface for the WS2812 LED strip for the Raspberry Pi 5. Currently it only supports communication over the SPI interface.

This library was created for the Raspberry Pi 5 because the previous go-to library rpi_ws281x is not (yet?) compatible. It should work on other Raspberry Pi models as well, but this has not been tested.

Thanks to this repository for the research on the SPI communication.

Preparation

Enable SPI on the Raspberry Pi 5:

sudo raspi-config

Navigate to Interfacing Options -> SPI and enable it.

Optional: add your user to the spi group to avoid running the script as root:

sudo adduser YOUR_USER spidev

Installation

pip install rpi5-ws2812

Wiring

Connect the DIN (Data In) pin of the WS2812 strip to the MOSI (Master Out Slave In) pin of the Raspberry Pi 5. The MOSI pin is pin 19 / GPIO10 on the Raspberry Pi 5.

Usage

from rpi5_ws2812.ws2812 import Color, WS2812SpiDriver
import time

if __name__ == "__main__":

    # Initialize the WS2812 strip with 100 leds and SPI channel 0, CE0
    strip = WS2812SpiDriver(spi_bus=0, spi_device=0, led_count=100).get_strip()
    while True:
        strip.set_all_pixels(Color(255, 0, 0))
        strip.show()
        time.sleep(2)
        strip.set_all_pixels(Color(0, 255, 0))
        strip.show()
        time.sleep(2)

Use this library in a docker container

To use this library in a docker container, you need to add the --device flag to the docker run command to give the container access to the SPI interface. You also need to run the container in privileged mode.

Example:

docker run --device /dev/spidev0.0 --privileged YOUR_IMAGE

services:
  your_service:
    image: YOUR_IMAGE
    privileged: true
    devices:
      - /dev/spidev0.0