Here is a short video showing the current state of the gate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfeqSvm70j0

(Can I embed videos somehow?)

and a picture

As you can see, the internal ring is turning alright, but it does sometimes get momentarily stuck on a poorly shaped tooth and skips a few steps. This messes up the symbol alignment, but it's not devastating. In the video it is simply turning back and forth with increasing angle.

The lights look great. They came out better than I was expecting. The light is nicely diffused by going through a couple layers of textured translucent plastic. I just scraped the paint off where I wanted the light to come through.

The smd LEDs were soldered to thin enameled wire salvaged from a motor. The wires were routed around the edge of the gate and hot glued in place. Here is the rats nest of soldered up LEDs followed by a much more orderly picture of them attached.

You can see the breadboarded circuit in the top picture. Here is a rough schematic. I wish I could put a larger version here.

Of course I will post the code here when it is finalized. The next steps include setting up the IR communication with the remote dialer, putting it in a proper stand that conceals all the stuff on the bottom, and getting some software made for the internetting side side of the project. Team member dkopta is working on the software, but it is not ready yet.