During my LED-googling, I also ran across the Neopixel light strips. Those are strips made of WS2812 LEDs - RGB LEDs with integrated 2811 controller. Thanks to Adafruit there also is a control library, which makes it reasonably easy to control those things with an Arduino.
Here is an idea of integrated navigation and anti-collision lights for a quad:
4 segments, 1 red, 1 green and 2 white for left, right and rear arms, showing navigation colors and doubling as an anti-collision strobe. Those WS2812 are not immensely bright but hey - nobody said you can only use 3 per arm :).
And they probably work great for a plane too, just put half a meter of strip to every wing. That IS gonna be bright.
US-residents probably best get the strips from Adafruit. If you are in Europe, KT-Electronic's eBay-shop should be the right address.
Comments
...beacon pulses red with white strobe...
I'm not so much a fan of UFO-effects. I think it does look cool and sometimes pretty but it can draw negative attention. I try to keep the lighting for my aircraft at least close to general aviation standards.
I got a set ready now. Based on an Arduino Nano, I soldered 5 JR plug (male) pigtails to the Nano's DOUTs 5-9. Config is front left, front right, rear left, rear right and beacon. FL-FR are 3 LEDs each, beacon are 9+3 LEDs, 9 for the belly and 3 for the top (or maybe I switch this...)
The whole thing connects to the RX for power and also control. If the PWM is <1500, the lights are in standby mode, showing only 2+1 green dot at 1/4 brightness on the beacon strips, a bit like military formation lights. I might change this to more LEDs with less brightness. PWM >1500 switches to flight mode. FR shows red with white strobe, FR shows green with white strobe, RL and RR show white (1/4 brightness) with white strobe and beacon pulses red.
I would love to use this to indicate flight modes! That is, there's a different color for each flight mode, which is displayed as you switch between them. And perhaps you could add in a flashing sequence that only starts once the battery falls below a certain threshold. A visual battery alarm!