CrossRoads: I have looked in to the 2812's a little, my biggest hurdle is writing the code, i simply can't understand it to be able to write it to do all the different patterns i want to do. My 36yr old brain just can't figure it out and i don't have anyone close that can sit down and go through it line by line with me. I can wire them up and use an example code to get them to work, same with multiplexing, but the code just looks like spanish to me, so editing it has been impossible so far.
Woldramore: That is kind of what i have done on the xmas tree. One string of garland consists of a red LED, then green, then white. All the greens in that row are connected together, then all the reds, and all the whites. so i can turn on each color independently, or as you mentioned having the 3 channels, i can turn them on/off to imply motion.
I will try to get a video of the tree up this evening.
Here is a video of a pumpkin i made for Halloween, showing more of the sequencing i'm looking to do on the wreath. This pumpkin uses 28 channels, 3 per element, and a couple single channel elements, like the eye pupils.
The more i think about it, until the day i can actually figure out how to understand and write more complex code, i think i'm stuck having to adapt my projects to the # of outputs on an Arduino and writing long HIGH/LOW code sequences.