Today I spotted this "Digital Addressable RGB LED with PWM waterproof flexi strip" from Adafruit.
Each LED in this strip is individually addressable, meaning you can set the colour and brightness of each LED separately.
Imagine the display wonders you could create with these on your arducopter.
Here is a video
Also available at www.pcboard.ca
Comments
Please note that if you are considering using these lights on an APM-driven aircraft you will need to use a second little Arduino board (Nano, Mini, etc.) to run the lights. These lights require a lot of cycles, so you wouldn't want to use the APM for that.
That's really cool. I'll have to get some.
These programmable RGB LED strips are indeed a lot of fun. I used them extensively on my most recent robot project, which is an autonomous mechatronic tank. The main robot uses an Arduino Mega, but I drive the lights using an Arduino Nano. I programmed cut-up and re-soldered pieces of the light strip to change color depending on the direction the gearbox on each wheel is moving in the mecanum drive system (where each wheel operates independently in order to achieve agile movement). I also programmed the lights to change during the arming sequence, shooting, and other actions. You can see this in the video below. I would highly recommend these RGB LED strips. Robot details are here.
That looks cool, could do some fun things with it on arducopter, and could also use it as a low battery warning to by changing all the lights to red or something.