A fun little project that looks incredible and doesn’t take much material. it is fairly beginner friendly as well.

Intro

This is a beginner/intermediate difficulty project that requires some soldering skills and a computer to program the associated microcontroller. Soldering is not too difficult and there are plenty of tutorials to help with that. The skills that you will learn on this project will open the door to many more fun projects so it’s worth it to learn if you don’t already have this knowledge. Let’s get started!

Printing

0.2mm layer, 2 walls, 10% infill, 45 degree bridge, no print tower, no support. There is a filament change but that's not too hard to do. White will diffuse better but I liked the vibrant look of clear.

WLED flashing

‘Flash’ the microcontroller with WLED firmware. Simply plug it into your computer and go to https://install.wled.me/ and click install and select the appropriate port that your microcontroller is plugged into. If you need help with this you can always go to the knowledge base on that website for further instructions and/or their WLED discord. Super helpful folks there. Enter in your Wi-Fi credentials after flashing the unit and now you will have access to the user interface. Click Config tab, then click LED Preferences. Change the ‘Length’ to 98 LEDs. Click Save on top. Now click on the ‘Security and Updates’ tab. Scroll to Restore presets and enter this https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DKkrBB7sphM9mtS-cv63cyPunq_6YhMo/view?usp=sharing then click save. Presets and playlist are preconfigured but feel free to have fun with other cool effects!

                                                                                                                      Wiring

This part is actually pretty simple. Only three 60mm wires. I recommend color coding them so as to not get confused. White -ground, red -5 V+, green -data signal(GPIO2). The LED strip itself will already come with the end wired so you can just cut the plug off and solder it to the microcontroller directly. White to ground, red to 5V, green to GPIO2. I designed the internal box with exact dimensions so that every time you wrap around the corner(in a spiral fashion) it will be in the middle of the little LEDs. Do this part carefully as this strip does not like getting bent more then once. If you’re using raw length of material with no wires pre-soldered to the end you will need heat shrink tubing to protect the soldered end, as the pads break off VERY easily without support. The length is approximately .6 m or 98 LEDs. The top part gets a little messy(see picture) but it won’t really matter in the end. Still looks cool. Plug unit in and test that strip is working.

I designed the box walls with little alignment holes that you can use 3mm lengths of raw filament in(thanks pilfit). Makes assembly much easier. Assemble all of the walls and the top with superglue and filament. Slide the microcontroller in the slot on the base. Before gluing the top parts on, plug it in again to make sure everything is functioning properly. Once confirmed you can glue light cube on base(I used hot glue for this part) and top parts to base. Enjoy!

Parts List

ESP32 C3 controller- https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805781327184.html

WS2812B LED strip(2.7mm narrow, 160/m, DC5V,1M)- https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256806510961905.html