I decided to use an Arduino for driving my WS2801 RGB LED chain and, after all, programming it in C isnt that bad though I miss the comfort of the Xojo IDE quite a lot and I always forget one or two of those pesky parentheses.
When it came to connecting separated chains, I failed miserably in soldering. I cannot say I solved it, but I found these brilliant tutorials about soldering basics which drove me to order new tips for my soldering station, leaded solder and a few more tools. And, besides, they are very enjoyable to watch:
This is a good video to help with soldering techniques, thanks Ulrich. Having a good solder connection is very important with I2C and other types of communication with the Raspberry Pi. 
Youre very welcome, Eugene! “When you feel yourself unable to perform a task, examine the basics” an old wisdom from my childhood was valid again. Now, the first 55 LEDs are running nicely a FastLED demo on my Arduino, waiting for a C program to communicate with the Xojo Raspberry Console app.
It wasnt so difficult to solder 90 degree pins onto the copper electrodes once I used the appropriate tools. 
And thanks to you for the latest book additions!
I moved from electronics, mostly soldering 
, to programming. Watch this video, and you know why.
I understand perfectly, Joost, but I must say I feel RasPi programming very enjoyable because it brings you more into connection with the physical world. If you ever couldnt find sleep because your mind was busy pondering about some programming problem you know what I mean 
How did you load/interact with the fastled WS2801 library in Xojo.
With an Arduino attached to the Raspi.