Have you looked at the wiki ?
https://hyperion-project.org/wiki/3-Wire-PWM
I have yet to document abusing the SPI bus yet.
My SPI to ws2812 stuff is here
https://github.com/penfold42/stuff/blob/master/README.md
I've never bothered with level shifters - I had some minor corruption on one strip that the level converter didn't fix - turns out my wemo controlled fluorescent lights were causing interference
how the hell I missed it. Thanks a lot.
One more question. I'm trying to do it on openelec. Does I need some change in the system to activate the GPIO.