[krieck]

I also recommend using an Arduino to control the lights. You can easily signal your color changes using I2C or just DIO changes.

An advantage to using a separate co-processor is that you can decouple the lights programming from the rest of the robot development. You can develop and test while the robot or the roboRIO is being used elsewhere. Being carefully mindful of the rules, you might be able to make lights programming part of your off-season training. Or, reprogram the lights after bag-day.