Beginner looking for a little help.

[jhogge]

Hello everyone. I know that a first post asking for help to this extent is not the best way to start things off, but I am experiencing information overload when trying to find the appropriate components for a project I am trying to get started on for my Harley.

Let me preface this by saying, I am a software guy by trade and hobby. The hardware world is new and exciting to me.

I am interested in designing an LED board which will allow me to individually address 36 RBG LEDs, allow 1mb of sd-card pattern storage.

These are the LED's I have been looking at purchasing:
LED - RGB Super Flux [RGB] - $1.00 : FunGizmos, make something fun!

All of the other components are unknown to me right now. Every time I think I have it figured out regarding what I need, I come across something else that points me in a completely different direction.

I'm not looking for someone to design this for me, rather I need some input into where to look and/or what you would buy if it were your project.

 

[flat5]

Exactly what are you planning to accomplish?
The smarties here will know what you need if they understand the project.

 

[jhogge]

The goal is to create an RGB LED controller to handle 36 LED's.
The LEDs will not be in a matrix, cube, or strip configuration. Each LED will be placed at separate points on the bike.
Each LED needs to be addressable for as many colors as possible, and I would love to be able to ensure consistent brightness across the color spectrum.
I want to use an SD card to hold data regarding the LED sequences. I have designed a windows software interface which can create my pattern sequences and write to an SD card, I just need to be able to plug it in and be able to access it from the microcontroller.
I also need to be able to accept input from 5 power sources (switches) to control the units actions / animations. These will be simply boolean state indicators, so they will not interact with the animations, they will simply select them.
This will all run on a dirty 12v dc system (motorcycle).

If there is something else I need to tell then please let me know.
There are just so many options regarding which components to use that I am dumbfounded as to what will be the most sturdy, most cost effective way to handle this.

I would prefer go fully homemade as opposed to buying prefab kits for any of the components and I want to stay away from Arduino.

 

[Brevor]

36 RGB led's, thats 108 led's total. All individually addressable with variable brightness, That wound be a very complicated controller to build. Also a lot of wires all over the motercycle.
You might want to consider something smaller. I saw somone do something like this once for only 64 channels his PC board was something like 6X8 inches and about 10 IC's.