Sparkfun Electronics WS2812 Breakout Hookup Manual page 10

WS2812 Hardware Overview
Note: Make sure to not confuse the WS2812-based IC with the APA102 addressable LEDs. The APA102
LEDs are very similar to WS2812s with a few caveats: APA102s can be controlled with a standard SPI
interface, and they have an extremely high PWM frequency. The APA102 requires the FastLED library to
control. The FastLED library does support the WS2812 chipset. Try checking out the Lumenati Hookup Guide
that uses the APA102-based LEDs for more information.
The WS2812-based LED is much more than meets the eye. It may look like a common 5050-sized (5x5mm) LED,
but there's actually an integrated circuit embedded inside there too. If you look really hard, you can see the tiny
black chip hidden in there, along with minuscule gold wires connecting the chip to the LED. Below are images of
the WS2812 and WS2812B zoomed in.
Pretty nifty view at the guts of the WS2812.
The LED itself is like any RGB (Red/Green/Blue) LED. The brightness of each color can be adjusted using pulse-
width modulation to one of 256 different levels. That means there are 16,777,216 (256 ) possible combinations of
colors. You can produce any color from white to black (off), or salmon to sienna.
Breakout Board Pinout
The breakout board mounts that multi-talented LED onto a PCB, and breaks out the few pins required to control
the LED.
Another nifty view for the WS2812B.
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