The most evident new feature of the WS2812B is a reduced number of pins (from 6 to 4), which preserve a nice size for easily soldering them (using a fine-tip soldering iron) to ~2mm x 1mm pads on a PCB. The 6 pads of the older WS2812 made it a bit difficult to route the DO pin of one module to the DI pin of the next when spacing between the modules was tight. With the WS2812B, routing the traces on a PCB is a breeze, particularly when designing arrayed configurations as the Arduino Shield shown in this step's images.



The additional space between the WS2812B pads allows for:



Easily routing the 3 necessary signals: Power, Ground, and Data.

Using thicker traces to connect Power and Ground, which allows for higher currents to run safely on a PCB

We can see in the images above how easy it becomes to route a 5x8 array for the Lumina Shield for Arduino using these new LEDs—for comparison, we include an old design of a 16x16 array using WS2812s. The design files for the Lumina Shield can be found on this Github repository Onething to note is that, for reasons we cannot fathom, the layout for the WS2812B has a little notch on the corner of the package indicating pin 3 rather than pin 1! We need to pay extra attention when soldering these by hand, so that we don't orient the module as we would with typical ICs (or the WS2812, for that matter).*.tftable { font-size: 12.0px; color: rgb(251,251,251); width: 100.0%; border-width: 1.0px; border-color: rgb(104,103,103); border-collapse: collapse; } *.tftable th { font-size: 12.0px; background-color: rgb(23,21,21); border-width: 1.0px; padding: 8.0px; border-style: solid; border-color: rgb(104,103,103); text-align: left; } *.tftable tr { background-color: rgb(47,47,47); } *.tftable td { font-size: 12.0px; border-width: 1.0px; padding: 8.0px; border-style: solid; border-color: rgb(104,103,103); } *.tftable tbody tr:hover { background-color: rgb(23,21,21); } Pin # Symbol Function *Notch on package indicates this pin. 1 VDD Power supply LED 2 DO Control data signal output 3* VSS Ground 4 DIN Control data signal inputAnother detail worth mentioning is that the Power (VDD) and Ground (VSS) pins are diagonally across one another. Thus, the traces connecting to these pins can be quite thick! However, if we make the mistake of soldering the module 'backwards', we would short Power and Ground (pin # 1 and 3). Lucky for us, as we'll see in the next step, WorldSemi has included a reverse polarity protection circuit that will prevent the WS2812B from being damaged by this error—we, of course, recommend avoiding the mistake altogether :)