if anyone's interested, I got a usbasp working today with Hyperion and https://github.com/poljvd/hyperion-usbasp
It's a $2 USB device designed to program avr microcontrollers but can be reflashed to drive ws2801 or ws281x led strips < 256 LEDs long.
If you don't already have an avr programmer you need to buy 2 of them so you can reflash one.
Let me know if you want more details or the pre compiled hex code for it