How to animate perpendicular strips moving along a cable? (visualizing DC electric current) I'm a newbie to Blender.  I've been doing mediocre solid modeling (using Alibre) for years, so creating models to import isn't a big problem for me.  But I'm wanting to learn to do a very specific simulation of electrical current flowing using Blender.  This animator did a wonderful job of current flow simulation tracking an electrical path (wire) at the 0.48 to 1:10 point:


https://youtu.be/CWulQ1ZSE3c?t=48s
The white cylindrical current objects track the path (wire) even when the wires move as the switch is put in place.
I've watched some tutorials on:

having objects follow a path: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6NdQGySZhU
using keyframes as well as the dope sheet:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHdh8p37yM8

I'm guessing there may be multiple ways to perform this current flow simulation.  I'm finding Blender so powerful but also feature rich - feature rich enough to be confusing and difficult to learn.  Anyone have ideas on tutorials i should watch to help me get to this electrical current flow faster?  I really appreciate any help! Lane
If you don't mind some stretching and compression - that happens when the segments of the curve don't have all the same length - then you can just bevel a curve and add a procedural bi-color shader that is driven by the frame rate for the animation.

If you don't like the stretching and compression then you can do what moonboot suggested: create a cylinder, apply an Array and Curve modifier. Last but not least, use a procedural shader for the animation. The drawback of this method is that you need one cylinder for each cable. But it can be a linked duplicate, so no biggy.
Shader for animation

Enter #frame + 12 in the purple value field to create the driver. 6 is the speed, and the +12 (=2x6) is needed for a continuous loop over all frames. 2 because it's bi-color. Switch the Add math node to Substract to reverse the direction.