Let's go back to your original problem - not enough channels. When I started several years ago I had 8 mini trees with 3 colors each, but since I did not have enough channels I daisy chained all the same colors together and used just 3 channels. The next year I went to 16 mini trees, but still not enough channels even though I added a bunch to the whole display, so I put each each the white on a separate channel and then daisy chained the other colors so that every other tree was daisy chained together. Then I could turn on half red and half green with every adjacent tree being a different color. That along with being able to chase the whites through the colors gave a lot of options. Now I finally have enough channels to have each color on each tree be individually controlled. Don't think that you have to have each string on a channel when you first start. There are ways to make it interesting and still be channel poor. We all want more channels so we get finer control, but budgets and time don't seem to cooperate. I just add another 64 channels it seems every year. And this is without getting into the RGB channel conundrum.