I thought a couple meters of Digital Addressable RGB LED Strips around his chair would be a good solution. These gave me the ability to provide him some good safety lighting at night as well as some fun lights everywhere else.
This is an Arduino based controller running on an atMega328 microprocessor on a home etched PCB. Power is provided off one of his chair's batteries and regulated down to 5V through a beefy 50W 10A capable regulator. Under the right armrest, there is a small box that contains the On/Off switch as well as a button to change lighting modes of the strip. The strip is hot glued on some aluminum angle we mounted on the back an under the seat of the chair. The angle was anodized to make it more reflective and does very well.
I currently have 17 lighting sequences programmed with 15 being active. Initial prototypes utilized a sound level monitor but he decided he didn't want that so it was disabled. On the PCB, I added the possibility of a couple of future upgrades including a couple 1W leds, another button, and a potentiometer.
The lighting modes available now in the sequence on the video are:
* x-mas theme
* single color changing light rotating around
* whole strip illuminating an led at a time to change colors
* slow color change of whole strip
* color bands shifting around the strip
* flashing yellow (caution)
* flashing red/blue (police mode)
* a red and blue light circling around in opposite directions with 4 led tails trailing behind
* white light
* random light changes on individual leds
* random light changes on the strip changed one led at a time starting at a random point and in a random direction
* a white led every 6th led shifting around a green background
* a kit like effect on all four sides
* all lights randomly sequence on with a random color then randomly sequence off
* a flickering of all lights quickly with a random color
He can now see and be seen much better!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zQvEhkedRc
