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What I want to achieve is, I want to use my own LED pin diodes, customly place them into my sculpture and animate them. This is as I understand quite straightforward. The problem is the amount of wiring . I would want them to connect one another in series with addresses, rather then each led needing a direct data from the controller on a separate cable.

I know that addressable LEDs use a single data line through the all lights, eliminating the need to connect each led physically to the controller to get data. Is there any way to build a similar system with a bus-like structure, I believe it is possible. And if so, how? What would I need? I guess I need individual small chips for each LED, but I don't know if that's the case or even if it is how so.

I consider myself quite a newbie in electronics-arduino or LEDs, however I'm actively looking into it and researching.

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    You could buy the same chips, that are on the addressable LED strips, the WS2811 or its siblings.
    – chrisl
    Nov 13, 2020 at 18:13
  • If you connct ordinary LEDs to the same wire, the will behave relativly the same. You would have no chance to control them separately. If you use a PWM controller like WS2811, or 3 PWM pins from an Arduino to control one single LED you can control the LEDs separately. But from the amount of work and money you have to invest, this is only adviceble, if you can not exchange the currently used LEDs for the project/scupture. If possible use prebuild WS2811 LEDs like neopixels.
    – Peter Paul Kiefer
    Nov 13, 2020 at 18:42
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    you can buy addressable LEDs that have leads
    – jsotola
    Nov 13, 2020 at 19:49

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You can buy individually addressable LEDs like the ones in LED strips. If you are fairly new to electronics I would not try to build your own serial LED controller.

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  • I think this may be the safest option. I'm trying to understand the size limitations and the cost of these kind of systems. It turns out that there are even small pin LEDs with IC that are addressable! Thank you
    – Emir Uysal
    Nov 14, 2020 at 1:40

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