Having sketched up the basics of the design in one of my many 'FIELD NOTES' notebooks, I always seem to have a pile of active ones, I was able to write up a list of the parts that I thought I would need for the project. Bearing in mind that I had no parts on hand and would have to get anything that I needed and I didn't want to have excess leftover that I would have to deal with when I leave Denmark at the end of the year. So at the very least I needed:

• Arduino Uno;
• Breadboard;
• Breadboard Jumper Wires;
• Tactile Push Buttons;
• TIP31 Power Transistors;
• 100Ω Resistors;
• 10KΩ Resistors;
• Hookup Wire;
• 12V 5A Power Suppy;
• RGBW LED Strip – About five meters worth;

With this list inhand I turned to my old friends 'ebay', 'Deal Extreme' and 'Banggood' (Which despite its questionable name is a very useful DX type supplier) in search of economically priced parts for my project. Having researched the import requirements for New Zealand in the past I had developed a 'safe figure' of $200 (US$160), and knew that anything under that had no customs requirements. I had no such 'safe figure' for Denmark, after some digging on the internet I discovered that in order to avoid 23% VAT being charged at the border I needed to keep my orders below 80kr. That's about USD $13, so not a lot to play with, especially given that I needed a five meter roll of RGBW LED strip.

After some clever splitting and staggering of orders I had parts on the way and I could focus on developing the code, and some hardware schematics while I waited. Shipping from china was meant to take less the 30 days, so I had some time.