Pixelstick
The Pixelstick from Bitbanger Labs (amazing name by the way!) is a revolutionary tool for those of us that love long exposure photography and lightpainting.
It consists of 200 full colour LEDs in a light aluminium housing that measures roughly 6ft, this is fed into a controller unit that reads images off an SD card and then displays them across the LEDs line by line.
The aluminium housing is in two pieces that are easily secured together to create the full length, but it means it can easily be transported in the bag.
The LED housing is attached via a padded arm that makes it easy to hold and control, although it does take some time to get used to the feel of it once moving or rotating.
Once you master it though, the limitations are gone and you can create pretty much anything your heart desires.
The controller can be controlled through the easy button layout, you have a directional pad, central button and a start button.
Couldn't get much easier, it really helps that the software layout makes everything easy to find.
The controller is fed via an SD card that you can pre-load from sets of images already created by Bitbanger Labs over here — http://www.thepixelstick.com/content.php
Or create your own, which is actually rather simple.
You can use their embedded online converter that will create a suitable image from one that you feed in, or you can create your own via simple steps in Photoshop and the like.
The Pixelstick reads images at 300x200px and they must be rotated 90 degrees counter-clockwise (which allows it to read data linearly, so it runs faster).
This simple process means you can mass convert images and prepare them for the controller.