[SteveGarward]

We typically use one of the addressable strips from Adafruit, driven by an Arduino, taking messages from the robot software over I2C. Last year we used the NeoPixels, and while they were great, the timing required to drive them meant that interrupts were disabled on the Arduino, so we couldn't use I2C, and used digital I/O lines instead. Not ideal.

This year we are using the new DotStar strips from Adafruit. They are like the happy offspring of the LPD-8806 driver strip, and the NeoPixels. Nice and bright, no external driver chip for the LEDs, one more signal wire, but not as tight timing for signals, so you get interrupts back! So far we are really liking them.