Hi Richard.

Thanks for the link. The real help was ... the color of the cables. On my strip the ground is Blue and +5V is Black. Really! They made +5V Black!

Of course I used Black as ground and that was the problem.

Be careful if color is not red then,

Black is +5, NOT ground.
Blue is Ground.

Chinese people might have a different color preferences...

I had it working now. Almost got crazy, since logic analyzer was showing all was OK!

This type of LED's is more easy to control since they do not need strict timings. Just spit out at whatever pace you like or can and LED's follow. Very easy for any MCU.

People have reported driving SPI up to 60MHz on these strips.

Ioannis