I am not a programmer. I am pretty educated on the standard PC. I have converted a miata to dc electric power and need to keep the 76 lipo batteries alive. Lipos live between 3v and 4.2v. Would an arduino board be able to sense voltages on multiple batteries and send a signal to a neopixel on a strip to change color based on voltage?
The end result would be a couple neopixel strips at the base of my windshield that would gradually change in hue from blue color at full charge to green at 3v and immediately red at anything below 2.9v. The battery depletes slowly so if it took a minute to scan and report, it wouldn't be bad.
I do not like any of the bms systems I have seen and would prefer to bottom balance manually.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated before I educate myself and find it would be impossible or outrageously expensive. Tedious, I can do.
you need to check 76 analog inputs and need to solder a wire between any battery contact to do this. 76 analog inputs is too much for any Arduino, so you need to do multiplexing of the inputs. same for the 76 outputs to drive your LED strips. Speed is not a problem for the arudino, it runs at 16Mhz.
You will need to filter your analog data, to get useful results. Lipos will go undervoltage if you draw current, especially when build in such a big pack (diffrent resistance of a single cell).
The usual lipo-saver doesn't check each single cell. These check the overall voltage of a pack and signal the undervoltage, this is much easier to handle.
There are ready made BMS boards doing exactly this.
Might be an easier solution. However building it your own might be the whole idea of this project so not sure if the bms idea is a good one 
I was thinking of a few Adafruit Metro Mini 328's or a better suggestion. How many cells can be monitored with something like this?
BMS is not an option - WAAAY too expensive to handle a 120Ah with 1000 amp pull. Most people do a bottom balance bringing the low cell up to the others then bulk charging the whole thing.
I have constructed a breakout panel with rca jacks to each cell. It is in the passenger compartment. Soldering leads from the jacks to the arduino wouldn't be inconvenient. I think the neopixel would be cool.
I could see sending to a android tablet with a bar graph display. I am open to many suggestions.
Like I said, tedious I can do.
Plan for many, start with one.
BMS IS the only safe way to do this as a 38S battery pack will get up to 160 volts, and thats way beyond any Arduino to accurately measure.
Even with 78 A/D inputs the accuracy of the cell measurement gets worse the higher the cell count goes due to the voltage dividers needed for each cell.
It will never see 154v which is the maximum I will be charging the pack to.
Can it read 1 cell whose voltage is between 4.2 and 3.
How many cells can it read before maxing out it's individual inputs.
If the Adafruit Metro Mini 328 has 10 pads then I would need 8 boards.
You cant read a single cell, as the Arduinos A/D converter measures between its input pin and the Arduino ground.
In a series string of cells , only the bottom cell has a ground connection.
You could read the bottom cell OK , but for all the others, you would need either a voltage divider to reduce the voltage to less than 5V , or relays to isolate the cells while they were being read.
And this is is why you need a BMS, as the ICs in a BMS which do the series reads can read single cells.
So the first cell would be able to measure voltage between the ground pin and (a0) pin and there isn't a way to also get it to read the voltage between (a1 as second ground) and (a2 as second positive).
Go ahead an try it out with a 2s or 4s? Should be easy enough to do that and figure it out.
Curious about it now 
What would be a good choice for the test board?
I was hoping the teensy LC with all those inputs and that low price but might not be a good choice for a first timer. Is there a better option to play with then choose the ones to build with.
The arduino uno is cheap and has some analog pins so you can start with that i guess. But wait for more seasoned arduino users to respond
I ran into a bms that used attiny per cell to read while isolated with optocouple somewhere. It’s still costly and lots of work.
I ran into a site called tinkercad. They have circuit design software that lets you bring up a arduino uno and attach things to it, write software, and execute the code.
Is this a good testbed for my project while I await the hardware?