I am a stained glass artist trying to light a 9 panel stained glass project. Basically, I want to back light - dim that then front light each panel separately kind of in a wave. I just saw as I was typing - some topics showing up on the right. I'll check them out as well. Just wondering if what I have will do what I want. Today I got the board to blink! That's exciting. 
I'm searching Google and started watching videos but not even really sure what to ask for.
- Done a lot of that here.
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Welcome to the group.
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Here is your homework.
Some topics might not apply now, skip over them, review them later.
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@pldeere NeoPixels are popular for use with lighting effects, this link is a pretty good read
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Like this?
I have also done some stained glass work when I was younger. The problem was the number of places you could get the glass from was very limited, involving long trips to get the raw material. This was in the pre-internet times.
I think the problem is that when you back light anything then front light it your light sources get in the way of each other.
One thing you could try is to use the addressable LED strips mentioned in post #3 and have two sets, both programmed up in white.
One set is placed horizontally on the front on the front of the frame and the other on the back if the frame. This horizontal mounting is sometimes called "end firing" LEDs. These are LED types in their own right, but in effect if you mount the strips in the right way you can create an end firing strip.
The rest is just simple software.
Can you re-phrase that please? I'm not sure I get it.
My wife was a stained glass artist for a time. So I have seen that front-lighting often produces a rather dull, uninteresting result compared to back-lighting. Perhaps the varieties of glass you use show something more interesting?
How much do you know about light? I mean the science of light and human vision?
RGB LEDs cannot produce white light. They can fool the eye into perceiving light as white, in the same way as many TV screens do. But it is a trick.
Stained glass can filter the light passing through them in a rich variety of subtle ways. For this reason, the colour of the light that passes through the glass may not look the same for an RGB led set to produce "fake" white light as a genuinely white light.
So have fun experimenting. By all means try RGB LEDs but try white LEDs also for comparison.
Might also be worth getting some ultra-violet LEDs to try. In many, perhaps most, stained glass panels, nothing interesting at all will be seen. But the chemicals used to stain the glass are many and varied. Some might fluoresce under UV light, which could result in some interesting effects you probably haven't seen before.
Thank you. Starting to look through these today!
Thank you. I'll check it out. I will only be using white lights but I'll check out the tips for building and powering projects
Wow. I think this is something I need to consider. Thank you for sharing this. Honestly, I wasn't even sure what questions to ask so this is very helpful.
When you say backlighting/front lighting and the light sources getting in the way of each other, what do you mean? I anticipate that the section that would be backlit would turn off or bleed out before the front lighting takes place. Does that back sense?
I mean physically get in the way of each other. Nothing to do with it meaning on or not.
Unless constructed as a side firing light front and back, then the two sides are going to occupy the same physical space.
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