Greetings,,,
Been playing a bit with the Arduino units. The information for the DMX controllers there is in the Playground on the Arduino web site. If you haven't seen it. There are limitations, of course. A microcontroller without computer input has a limited memory and thus, limited sequences. Unless you start adding extra memory, etc. But, without having to sync to music, you could actually have quite a lot of outputs, etc., depending on the model of Arduino, or clone.
Some of the Christmas toys use various controller methods, basically the same. Just have to decide how complicated you want to get. A pic could do the same thing, or a non-Arduino bootloader micro. The Arduino just makes the programming quite a bit easier.
I'll be using the Lynx units on most things. Higher channel counts are easier that way. I haven't seen anyone using the Arduino system for more than just a few channels.
Keith