UCS8904 IC Pixel Protocol Overview

In previous post, we disscussed the UCS2904B IC Chip pixel protocol which was designed by UCS New Technology Co. in China.

Today, let's discuss another 4 Channel IC pixel chip protocol named UCS8904. 

This UCS8904 IC chip acutally model is UCS8904B which was designed by UCS New Technology Co. too.  It uses a SPI protocol to drive IC pixel chips. While UCS8904 offers all the same features as its RGB version, UCS8903， but what the most interested us is this UCS8904 IC could run 4 channels like the UCS2904 IC that dedicated to RGBW, but with 16 bits color dimming which UCS2904 DO NOT have .

This UCS8904 mainly comes in a SOP8 package, allowing us for more flexibility with LED solutions. 

UCS8904 Technical Specifications:

UCS8904 Advantages:

• Very High PWM rate 4.0KHZ allows for filming the pixels with 60fps appromately.
• Drive 4 colors LED allowing for tones that were previously hard to achieve with single RGB strip.
• 16 bits of data, 65536 grayscale for each color makes dimming curves very smooth.
• High PWM 4.0KHZ rate allows for filming these pixels with cameras up to 60fps
• RGB and White ( any other single color) can be independently controlled to allows us to create bolder and more vibrant colors than with RGB alone.

UCS8904 Shortcomings:

• No Clock data line, only data line restricts refresh rate to be limited by the protocol speed, which will generally be slow.
• No redundancy in data like the GS8208B. 

UCS8904 Cautions:

1. Very Similar with the SK6812 RGBW Protocol / SM16704 Protocol, but couldn't work together with those IC chips. 
2. Similar with the UCS2904B IC, but couldn't use the UCS2904 IC program to work with this UCS8904B LED strips. 
3. UCS8904B have same pin define with the UCS2904B that they're available for same PCB, BOM maybe a little different. 
4. UCS8904B chip , couldn't choose the program of the UCS2904B. Should be re-programmed. 

If you have any info should be updated, tell us freely.

Best regards from Art LED Team