Just for reference, you can do freeze-motion quite effectively without the room being totally dark.. it needs to be dim, mind you, but remember the exposure is going to be done by the FLASH, not your shutter. You also don't want to have depth-of-field issues, so you are going to use a small aperture (large f number), which will limit the amount of light. If you are using a xenon strobe, the background dim lighting useful for setting things up is not consequential to the actual shot. I typically use Bulb for stop motion shots, with the shutter open for seconds.. but the strobe is of course only a thousandth of a second long. It's a matter of light energy..
You'll be interested in a project I have waiting in the wings: I've been collecting the flash units from disposable cameras, and will be building a special-effects strobe with variable triggering for multi-stop freeze framing. Right now I have six strobe units, but plan for the project to use a total of ten of them, with additional triggering for several external studio or slave flashes. I don't recommend this kind of thing to kids or anything... ANY camera flash contains HV Capacitors which RETAIN CHARGE EVEN WITH NO POWER- and can be DEADLY. (sorry, just important to mention that kind of thing!!!)
Most of us photographers here build camera/flash triggers as first projects.. it's a great way to get into the whole thing, the projects tend to be simple, and the results can be impressive. You should also build a sound trigger, I've had a lot of fun shooting wine glasses full of flourescent dye under blacklight and xmas tree bulbs, strobe triggered by the sound of the BB gun firing. You've got 90% done, now just start playing with other sensors..
Great job, keep it up!