That is some seriously nice work.  I am very interested in seeing what you come up with for the 2803s.

clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap

Ah, so you are using raw LEDs and the ws2801 chip and doing the soldering yourself as opposed to getting the chips built in. 

The WS2803 with 18 channels looks great - checked out the specs - looks like the control protocol is the same - killer!  The WS2803 looks like a nice cost saving way to implement strips and matrix form factors.   Even on ebay they can be had as little as 1.39 each at the 100 level .. and that runs 6 RGBs each. 

That may be the most cost effective solution yet - thanks for the info.

Nice video and build with raw leds. I saw some fading in there - what types of chips did you use - TLCs?

If your "down under" maybe check out a local seller.  I have purchased from this person a few times. 
http://www.bliptronics.com/

Not sure how the price compares but see how many colors the ge ones give you and compare the specs. 

Need to open up that video ... it is private at this time.

Is the idea here to create a connection from each computer to the unlock mechanism? If so and the computers are on a network, you may consider an Ethernet shield or computer with web server.

Here is a temporary display we setup at a local art gallery where we are light artists.

This is three white Christmas trees with the normal lights turned off and strings of WS2801 LEDs wrapping them.  We created snowflake-stars out of foam / paper board and attached them to a long PVC pipe and added the same LEDs.


One arduino runs the 267 LEDs / patterns.  Pattern details cycled through in the video are stored on eeprom using custom application. 
Side Note: The window shown at the start of the video is a LPD6803 based strip on another arduino, not part of the temporary Christmas display.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all.

Nice results and such simple code - well done.

Check out this library.
http://code.google.com/p/fastspi/

This uses SPI, so your clock goes to pin 13 and data to 11.  The way you are connecting power is correct.

Use SPI instead of shiftOut.

This post may help...
http://arduino.cc/forum/index.php?topic=38155.0;wap2

These posts may help ..

shiftOutFast using direct port manipulation ..
http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1254488619

shiftOutEvenFaster - using SPI.  Here is a final version for RGBs but it would work for single LEDs as well.
http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1278251011

Hope that helps

Color can be broken down into Hue Saturation and Value/Brightness to make the color scheme more logical.

Think of Hue is a wheel is broken into 360 colors - one for each degree of the circular wheel. 

The hue color wheel goes from red through yellow to green through cyan to blue and through majenta back to red as shown below.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Color_circle_(hue-sat)_trans.png

At 100% saturation and 100% value/brightness the color is what you may call "full color", like the outside of that circle.  If you want to make it darker, change the value/brightness to a lower value.  To make it washed out then change the saturation to a lower value.  Zero value/brt is black.  Zero saturation is white or gray depending on value/brt.

You can use the following calculator to get the degree from the color wheel and plug it in.  Use 100 for saturation and 100 for value/brightness and enter a color value from 1 to 360 and you will get the RGB value for any color.
http://www.csgnetwork.com/csgcolorsel4.html

Hope that helps.

Here are some videos of the final suit.  We added a belt, legs and a wii classic controller.

Suit, patterns and control overview:


Here are some videos of music play.

Suit Responding To Piano Music:


Suit Responding To Techno Music:


Happy Halloween!

A clock make with only a 12 RGBs display, smart.  Nice job on project and docs.