On the other hand, if you were, like me, an early adopter of the Raspberry Pi you probably find your old Pi 1 is too slow to use for demanding applications thes

On the other hand, if you were, like me, an early adopter of the Raspberry Pi you probably find your old Pi 1 is too slow to use for demanding applications these days. But doing a bit of bit banging and software or hardware SPI to control a strip of LEDs is well within a Pi 1's capability, and the Pi comes for free if you have one gathering dust.