I have build up a breadboard Kaleidoscope binary clock.

Archive FastLED Archive
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I have build up a breadboard Kaleidoscope binary clock. It uses a Mega2560, 3 daisy chained TLC5940s to 13 RGBs (4 LEDs for the 8, 4, 2 positions and 1 LED for the 1 position), a Chronodot RTC, piezo speaker, and a 16x2 LCD time read out backup for binary clock challenged folks. The kaleidoscope uses 9 colors including black and white.
Would it be possible to use 4 WS2812B strips instead of the 3 TLC5940s and 13 RGBs? One strip each for the 8, 4, 2, 1 positions in the clock. I have looked at the examples in he fastLed library, and can’t figure out how or if I could use multiple colors on multiple strips. If someone could show me how to set up multiple colors on each strip, and how to call them to indicate time in binary, I would be eternally greatfull. I’ve posted this question on the Arduino.cc and Arduino.org forums without much luck. Thanks.
Dean Sanders

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I’m having trouble picturing the design. Generally you would wire all the strips as one and then have a lookup table for each binary digit. Once you set all then you do a single FastLED.show() and they will stay illuminated with the chosen pattern until the next show() is called.

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HI Eric, This design is based on a clock I bought for my daughter several years back. Chronoart Design no longer makes this. I thought it would be cool to try and build using the Arduino.The breadboard layout using all the components mentioned above, is a lot of stuff to fit into a 5" x 5" x 2""frame.
Thus, my desire to replace the TLC5940s and RGBs with the 4 WS2812B strips. Attached is a short video of the clocks from his website. My question, I guess, is there any way to use 4 pins for the binary positions, set up the pins with random colors, call the appropriate pins(ie: 8, 2, 1 = 11 oclock etc) hours and minutes, and fade up and down. Also, would you please expand on the table lookup suggestion. That’s more advanced than my usual coding. Thanks.

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In the end there is not reason to break up the strip for 72 pixels. digit 1 = offset 0, digit 1 = offset 13, … so it’s just a matter of translating each digit into the appropriate pixels. As for fading up and fading down, if you can’t spare counters then use an existing sin function to modulate the brightness based on time.

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Thanks, Eric, you’ve given me a direction to delve into.