I've been using neopixels to great success in combination with particle.io chips. They have cloud events and you can send whatever data to them. I'm sending a payload like `{ "color":"blue" }` and then all listening LEDs change. Plus they are individually addressable and are reusable for other projects. It's not the same level of brightness I'm guessing.

Adafruit has a 24 neopixel ring with a particle slot. It's like $45 for everything for one. No hub.