[EricH]

Originally Posted by tekman1001

The idea would be to power the arduino and the strips off a 12v Power distribution channel, and have it be completely independent from the crio. This would be the ideal solution as it would allow us true pwm control for smooth fading and a wide variety of colors. Also the lights would be on whenever the bot had power. From everything I have read this should be legal as it is all just for decoration, am I wrong?

No, it's not legal. See [R52] and the blue box for [R65].

You'd have to have the cRIO telling the lights to turn on and off.