Right, planning to stick up around eight floating shelves in an alcove to house the DVD collection and fancy putting some controllable lighting illuminating under each shelf (so wiring etc could be inside shelf cavity with LEDs bored through lower surface).

Either I can pick up a load of proper RGB LEDs (four prong jobs) and use those or for about half the price three seperate colours and mount them in a cluster. Is there any flaw in this thinking?

Also, in terms of controlling them (and this is where I get a little hazy) I assume by plonking three rheostats in a little box and controlling the power to either the seperate legs or individual LEDs I should be able to control the shade I want. Any controller plans have been for programmable serial connected circuits which seems a little overkill for what I want.

So, since you area smart lot that know more about this sort of stuff than I do, what have I got wrong in my assumptions and what ideas do you have to make the project better/easier?

Thank you

I was looking at RS Components and they have 5mm tri-colour for £1.83, which seems a lot cheaper than all the others

RS Components - need to use code 2508340211 to see them.

I reckon spacing them at about 200mm should be ok but means I still need about 40, plus a way of controlling them and connecting them over eight shelves :S

I dont even know if you connect them in series or parallel.

Youll struggle to get decent colours with a rheostat, as LED brightness doest vary uniformly.  It would work, but it probably wouldnt be massively controllable.  AFAIK the best way to get fancypants changing-colour shades out of LEDs is to PWM them with a PIC or similar.

[edit] something like this http://tobe.nimio.info/rgb_mood_light.php