TL;DR section provided!
Hey everyone First of all, to introduce myself shortly; I'm just a 19 year old worker from Finland. Yesterday, while doing the usual routine of searching for parts to upgrade my computer from germany... I accidentally bumped while looking for water cooling into computer cases.
Suddenly, I felt desire of a new case as well. Old one is missing the side that can be opened and well, is just practically holding my components. Even my internal HDD's aren't inside of it. Not to mention, weights are holding them down because of broken connectors and input slots.
So, I went on to searching them. Found literally nothing interesting. Everything seemed to be just dull in many ways. So I decided; Why won't I build my own?
The first thought I instantly stumbled upon was a computer case that has lights that go along the music. I'm a producer as well, after all. Now, this is nothing new probably. But my idea was not actually to have them work along the digital input - my idea was to have them automated completely with specific songs.
To give an example - imagine this running around inside a square plexi glass. (Well, the parts with only lights).
I certainly have the imagination, but I feel that my way of expressing it would be to build a custom system that allows me to do it...
TL;DR
Is it practical in any possibly way to have, say, 1000 leds in an external case that goes on top of my custom built computer case, each one being separately controllable?
It feels like that less controllers I have, the less wire mess there will be. But how expensive are the controllers? And also, what are small 5mm leds called that can change their colour and be dimmed?
The first thing that worries me the most is the wire mess and how practical it would be. I'd imagine that it would be reasonable to have around around 100-200 per controller and that I can identify which controller uses which group (in case any gets broken).
Most of the leds would be attached to a center pylon as well in a manner that there won't really be much space for anything else. The pylon is a round pylon, so is it really even possible?
And I'd love to have leds/cold cathodes running along the plexi glass wall on the inside. But I have no clue what could be smooth enough to attach them on it. It would be also be also a round plexi glass.
And the last issue - programming a song towards them. I do have imagination, but having around 1k leds would probably be a pain to automate with Arduins per song. Is it really realistic? I mean, is it possible to hire a programmer that could create a custom software interface to control them?
I'd say all it would have to do is to have just every led rounded in their groups in the software and a timeline. From point zero to the defined end, whereas I could choose the colour of any lights that have customizable colour and brightness.
So, any thoughts? Sorry for the long post. Also, I don't need the answer of how to do it exactly (unless it is simple!). I'd rather get direction and then start researching myself exactly what to do.