Simulating phaser array with NeoPixels

In this Tinkercad example, I’m trying to simulate firing a phaser array on a starship like the Enterprise-D or Voyager with a NeoPixel ring.

The LEDs on a NeoPixel are individually addressable, so it’s possible to animate the effect of starting the phaser fire from the ends of the phaser array and meeting in the middle. For convenience, I’m using the 24-pixel ring available at Tinkercad, but in reality you’d want to use a strip. I doubt you could bend a strip sufficiently to match a curved phaser array, but you could stand the strip on edge and then use a 45° mirrored surface to reflect the effect.

In this example, the phaser effect alternates between firing steadily from one spot and drifting to maintain a lock. Also there’s a trail of LEDs while the phaser converges.