One of my projects needed a small footprint μC. For a while, PIC chips had disappeared from the market post COVID and I opted for the ESP8266. But now, they are not only back but newer chips are available. I was using the PIC 12F1840 but I had outgrown the program memory of 7K. The PIC 16F18115 has twice the program memory of 14K. Besides some enhanced features that are not of interest, it is actually cheaper. While it has an internal oscillator of 32 MHz, it is a lot slower than the ESP8266. This will make driving the WS2812B a bit of a challenge.
There may be many ways to drive a WS2812B from a PIC using some peripherals imaginatively. This is yet another way. This drives a single WS2812B using a bit-banging approach.
The SK6812 is a good substitute for the WS2812B. The datasheet timings are a bit different from the WS2812B, though in practice, they may still interoperate. I have tried to generate timings that are valid for both chips as per their datasheets.
