Hi John,
Driving that many LEDs isn’t quite as simple as plugging them all in, I found a good article on the two approaches:
https://www.arrow.com/en/research-and-events/articles/let-there-be-light-working-with-leds-in-parallel
Basically you can either add a boost-capable IC to drive many LEDs at a time in series, or try and characterise your LEDs to drive them in parallel safely.
As far as Arduino choice, It’s all about how many different things you want going on at a time. Obviously each pin can only command one unique set of LEDs at a time, so if having all the flashing in sync is ok, you only need 2 pins, for 2 “sets” of lights you need 4, and so on. Any Arduino should be more than capable of flashing as many lights as you want, as even a fraction of a second is an eternity from the processor’s perspective, even on something as slow as a 328P.
Let me know if you have any followup questions!
