Powering and controlling hundreds of LEDs with a Raspberry pi

Question

How do you utilize the Raspberry PI to be able to power hundreds of LED lights?

Imagine I have Christmas Lights (LED) and I want to be able to control all individually (write a program on the Raspberry pi).

What kind of equipment and chips do I need to be able to do that. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

score 3 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:56

The solution would vary depending on the number of independently controlled LED and the desired frequency of their change of status. To get an answer started (and shamelessly ripping off already existing answers, see below):

port expansion using the I2C expanders, e.g. MCP230xx GPIO expander or TCA6424A
extension using shift registers
individually addressable LED strips, e.g. based on the LPD8806 (example) that seems to have a Pi library (if you look for it)

Sources and recommended further readings:

^{How to get MCP23s08(8 bit I/O expander) working with GPIO on Raspberry Pi?}
^{What is the best way to increase digital I/O lines on Pi?}
^{Raspberry pi GPIO extension}
^{Controlling 400 LEDs from a raspberry pi}
^{Controlling many LEDs with few GPIO pins}

Powering and controlling hundreds of LEDs with a Raspberry pi

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