Editing LED window display (section)

===GE Color effect lights===

These are individually addressable lights made by GE.  Robert Sun Quattlebaum figured out their data protocol.  You can find out more here.

http://www.deepdarc.com/2010/11/27/hacking-christmas-lights/

Each light is driven by about 5V. Each light consumes XXX amps displaying the color white at full brightness.  

In short, one data pin can drive up to 63 lights.  The data protocol allows for dimming and brightening all the lights, as well as 12 bit color.  Each frame takes 790 us to send, and there is a manditory 30 us quiet time between frames.

The maximum number of lights per string and the maximum FPS is given by the equation:

LPS * 0.820 * FPS = 1000

So if you want 30 FPS, you can have up to 40 lights per string.  If you have 32 lights per string, you can have 38 FPS.  If you instead have 24 lights per string, you can have 50 FPS.

Sherwin's display has 23 or 24 lights per strand using 4 arduinos, with 12 strands per arduino.  The display across the top of the display has 16 strands coming off of one arduino, each with 32 lights.  

We've bought a power supply for Sherwin's lights.

====TODO====

*Kevin, can you document how much power it takes to drive the lights?
*For our lights
**We need to buy a power supply for our top display.
**We need to wire everything up.
**We need to decide on and complete the physical construction of our lights.  This involves cutting the lights, soldering lights together, cutting holes in boards to hold the lights.
*For Sherwin's lights
**Some of the strands on Sherwin's display are buggy and need to be replaced.