Is the Spark Core a Real-Time Microcontroller (and Photon, too?)

Hardware
1

I am interested in buying an LED strip from Adafruit but the product has this note on it:
“There is a single data line with a very timing-specific protocol. Since the protocol is very sensitive to timing, it requires a real-time microconroller such as an AVR, Arduino, PIC, mbed, etc. It cannot be used with a Linux-based microcomputer or interpreted microcontroller such as the netduino or Basic Stamp.”

Can somebody tell me if the core and the photon are real-time microcontrollers like the note says is required?

The product is:

Thanks for any help!

Eric

2

Hi @EricBrian

The Adafruit Neopixel library has been ported to Spark and I hear it works well. I think there is a limit to the number of neopixels Spark can support but I believe it is hundreds.

Check the forum or the web IDE for Neopixel and you will find lot of people are using it already.

2 Likes
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You can also find some project, with guides, over here: http://www.hackster.io/spark there are also Neopixels ones among them.