Always good to be in the habit of putting the correct info in the SSC. If you overstate the nodes and then do a chase across strings you would get a gap in time while the missing node tried to light up. That would look awkward also. Being lazy and not wanting to count the nodes for my gutters and roof ridge after I cut them to length I configured an SSC for 128 nodes. Then I attached the string and used the xlights test function to turn on the quantity of lights I think I have. Then I adjust the count and repeat until I get the exact number of nodes.
The actual SSC doesn't care if it is programmed with more channels than it has, but where you would run into problems is in your sequencing software. I programmed all of my SSC with 120, as I was only using Flexstrips. But once I got a few of them up on my roofline, they were too long, so I cut off the extra. I did not go back and reprogram the controllers. But when I added them to LSP, I made a sequence of solid colors to make it easier to count them. I deleted the channels out that weren't there in the software.
Once I take them down, I may go back and reprogram the controllers anyway, mainly because I wasn't paying attention when I first started as to which channel was red to start with. So the first 6 controllers start their first channel on wrong numbers, so if I use the color picker program, it turns on the wrong color on those strips. So I have red on some of them, green on another and blue on another, if slide up just 1 slider. I don't do roofs, and the friend I got to come help me with the 4 strips up on the high part of my house have remained. The rest of them I can reach with a ladder, so fixed what I could.
