In anticipation of Homeworld 3, I wanted to recreate their promotional logo. I also wanted to make something bigger than my printer, so I took the wings as the longest part and scaled those up to barely fit on the plate, then worked around that. The end result is 9" tall and 15" wide!

Key for me in this was trying to get the edges of the light to really show off the glowing effect in the image, achieved through light animation.

This looks so much better in person, I swear!

I did this by using a warm white PLA for the inside of the faces and putting natural (clear) PLA right on the plate, using the walls as a transparent surface.

You'll need:

• Black, warm white, natural, and silk silver PLA
• A Wemos D1 Mini v3 (specifically the v3 for the mounting holes!)
• 2x M2.7 Self-tapping screws (for the D1)
• LEDs (I used some frighteningly powerful 160/m 5mm wide COB LEDs)
• A USB-C snap-in jack, the same as I use on all of these
• Liquid CA glue, maybe some E6000
• If you want to use non-IC lights, there's a standoff for an AOD4184 driver.

The parts print easily enough. Supports might be a pain to remove in the wings and hexes, just pinch them carefully from the side with some needlenose pliers and they should come off well enough. I tried to avoid them but felt it necessary for this one. I was also using some extraordinarily cheap HS PLA that I hadn't quite fully dialed in yet. A good PLA+ is your best bet.

Start by test-fitting the bowties that will hold the wing bases on to the center base. They should be snug and snap in. Remove them, add some glue (I used Loctite liquid CA) on the bases along the inner edges of the recess, then snap the bowties in and hold them down against a flat surface for a few seconds. I put a dribble of glue along the edges of the two bases just for a little extra and set it aside to cure for a while. Do not rush this step!

While that's curing, load WLED v0.15.0-b3 on your D1 and mock up your lighting installation to make sure everything works. I cut three 36 LED segments (22cm each) out of my spool and wired them up with plenty of extra since I wasn't sure exactly how this was going to go.

I ran one strip around the inside of the hex box (skipping the bottom) and one down the length of each wing. Make sure you wipe off the print with some alcohol first to ensure a really strong bond with the light strip.

There are two little covers that hide the wires to glue in. Unfortunately, they have a specific orientation but I put little labels on them to help.

I also put a few dabs of liquid CA to hold the wires down at the top of the wings, just so they wouldn't pull on the LEDs.

There is a L> and <R for left and right, and the arrows point in to the hex.

Ultimately I ended up using three pins for the LEDs:

D5 (GPIO 14) - Right Wing

D6 (GPIO 12) - Center Hexes

D7 (GPIO 13) - Left Wing

Be careful inserting the USB-C plug - it's a tight fit and you don't want to damage the thin walls of the hex. Gently pinching the snaps in with pliers first and supporting the print while you snap it in will make it easy. Solder all your positives and negatives together with the USB plug, heat shrink it off, and tuck it in. I had way too much wire but was able to push it all down.

For final assembly, the wings have retainer notches on the top, so I started by lining up the tip of a wing with the base then snapping the top down. It's a little wobbly, but holds together just fine. You might choose to add a dab of glue here or there (E6000 would be a great choice since it'll hold but you could pull it back apart if you had to). The center hex friction fits on the base plate without issue.

I've included my WLED config and presets as .txt files (just rename them to .json to upload them). Many of the presets make use of mirroring and offsets for the hexes so they flow with the wings. Play around and see what you can make!

!!! WARNING !!!

If you use the same LEDs I did, they're crazy powerful. At full power this mere 68CM of lights pulls 1.9 Amps! Be careful with your power supply selection so you don't melt anything!