FastLED VS FastLED_examples

I used the examples from here https://github.com/FastLED/FastLED/wiki/Multiple-Controller-Examples

Sweet. Then pretty much any arduino or other microcontroller would take care of what you need. The strips only take one output pin plus power and ground so just about everything will work for driving them. They act like a long shift register so the single pin is all that's needed to load the full strip with whatever patterns you want regardless of the length. You just have to tell it how many LEDs there are in total is all. Check out the FastLED library. You can learn more about it there and/or install the library in the IDE by pressing "ctrl shift I" for windows or "command shift I" for mac and search for it in the upper search area and install it right there. It comes with working examples too so all you would have to do is install the library, load one of the new example sketches that came with it, and probably edit the example to change the NUM_LEDS count to match what you're working with.

In the previously linked version comparing colorCurrent.h == colorTarget.h or colorCurrent == colorTarget without the .h worked the same since the colors were fully saturated and at full brightness. Comparing colorCurrent == colorTarget compares the H,S, and V numbers all at the same time.

Use the first one for regular unchanging intervals. Use the second one when you need the interval to change over time. Here's one of Marmilicious' examples.

Depending on the complexity of the animations you want, you could power them through the Arduino directly with a library like FastLED. https://github.com/marmilicious/FastLED_examples/blob/master/MIDI_test_v1.ino is an example.

Take note in my example: https://github.com/marmilicious/FastLED_examples/blob/master/custom_pixel_array.ino