Home Assistant Status Panel (WLED)
Description
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Since I wear headphones all the time, I'm not able to hear notifications on speaker, so I wanted a way to see visually what's going on in my system. This panel can show things like doors opening, washing machine finished, mailbox opened, doorbell, or whatever comes to mind. Sure I could, and I am using a tablet for this too, but this panel gives me a faster and bigger view. And the tablet is for control, not to keep an eye on things.
This panel uses addressable LED's which are controlled with an esp32 running WLED that then gets connected to Home Assistant for use in automations. The LED's light up labels containing the text that you extrude into it using the blank label .step file.
There are 3 sizes available: 8, 10 and 12 labels. The 8 fits on the Prusa Mini. Total sizes are:
- 8 - 166x150mm
- 10 - 199x150mm
- 12 - 232x150mm
All parts should be printed with 0.2mm layer height. There are special settings for the labels.
I won't be covering the basics of WLED, as that is done extensively on their website. This is also not a tutorial on basic electronics, like wiring and soldering. HA as well is far too advanced to cover here.
- Anything placed inside can not be above 11mm tall.
- Labels can be lightly glued or taped with double sided tape if they pop out.
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Powered by a USB boost\lithium charger that steps up the voltage to a constant 5v for the microcontroller. With a couple red lights active at half brightness it would run for about 15 hours with a 2000mah battery, according to runtime calculators. Battery is optional but you still need the boost board for the USB port (they are very cheap).
Would be easy to put in a different connector if preferred, since the wall is thin. Also possible to put in a switch to disconnect the battery so it's not kept at the maximum voltage at all times, which degrades it faster.
There are small holes in the base lower sides, and on top that can be drilled out if you want to chain multiple panels together. I probably would not power this with the small boost converter though. It might get very hot.
PLA is not recommended as the lights and converter can get pretty hot when using many lights, or when it's charging a battery. I would avoid white lights completely as they create the most heat. Use red, blue, or green colors. Power seems to be the same on them.
The panel is designed for use with 30 LED's per meter strips, but the 60 is also fine, which is what I used (it will require a different WLED setup though).
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Changelog:
- I changed the walls inside after printing mine. It was a little difficult to insert the LED strips, so I turned the long walls into smaller segments to make some extra room. Also added 1mm to the height.
- These walls may break with poor layer adhesion, or if they are too stiff with PLA. They need to have some flex when the strips are inserted. I used PETG.
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Printed Parts:
Base | |
| Pretty straight forward to print. 0.2mm. Solid. Should be dark to block light. |  |
Front face | |
| Prints solid. Should be dark so light can't be seen through it. |  |
White Reflector Inserts | |
Inserts for the light chambers that work like reflectors and diffusers, to make the light more even. Prints solid, white only. |  |
Labels | |
The label containing text is printed with the front down. It needs to be printed with 0.2mm layer height. It also needs 2 color changes. The first 2 layers are transparent, then black up to the last 2 layers, which are white. You can sort of see it in the left picture. If using PrusaSlicer you should probably turn off top layers and only use bottom layers. This is to avoid infill anchoring as you see in the right picture. This is a transparent layer so it will not look good. The text sketch is placed on the front and extruded from the back so you don't get mirrored text. Text should be extruded 2 layers behind the front - so 0.4mm from bottom of text to the front face. To get the dark screen look i have, tint film can be applied to the front after printing. | |
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Boost Converter Lock | |
This is just a small piece that can hold the boost converter down at the rear. It's glued in place inside tracks in the base. Prints on the side or upside down. |  |
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What You Need:
USB lithium charger and boost convertereBay search: lithium step up | |
This is a combination of a boost\step-up converter and a lithium charger. It will boost the voltage up from a 1 cell battery to the voltage you set, which would be 5v for the esp. Voltage is adjusted with the tiny potentiometer. The current capacity on this is limited. It can get hot. It's a TP4056 though, so it should have a current control resistor somewhere. You can skip a battery if you connect the esp to the input pads next to the USB connector. Be carful with the voltage adjustment. It can jump to max voltage very fast (dead esp). |  |
Level Shifter (maybe optional) | |
It might be necessary to use a logic level shifter if you get flickering lights or other strange behavior. This takes the 3.3v esp output and converts it to 5v, which is what the LED's data channel need. I use the recommended SN74AHCT125N for WLED, but this is a bit of a pain to wire due to having inputs and outputs on both sides, and no labeling. It would be easier to use the TXS0102\4\8 types, as they have inputs and outputs on separate sides, and they come on breakout boards with labels. |  |
Addressable LED Strip | |
These are regular 10mm wide addressable LED strips. Either WS2812B or SK6812. 30 or 60led per meter will fit, but you would need to disable half of them in WLED if you use the 60 type, which I did. The data channels (blue wires) can be connected in several ways. I used all 4 channels on the shifter. 1 wire that splits into each pair would be easier. Each pair would act as 1 strip then. Makes the segments in WLED much easier to set up. The TXS0102 is a small 2 channel shifter for that setup, if saving space is needed. |  |
Microcontroller | |
esp32 or esp8266. I used the M5 Stamp Pico (esp32). It's the smallest 32 I'm aware of. A D1 mini (esp8266) should fit as well. |  |
Custom PCB (optional) | |
Making something like this shouldn't be necessary. I had to simplify mine when it wouldn't fit with the wires on.. You can see the mess this level shifter creates on a stripboard. I used header pins so I could change the pins used on the esp. The right pictures is the board I made which was too tall with the wires going over. Lower left is what I ended up with. Just soldered everything straight to the board. |  |
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Lithium Battery (optional) | |
Lithium "pouch cell" batteries come in many sizes. The numbers marked on them refer to the dimensions of the battery. Thickness should not be above 10mm. I used a 103450, so 10x34x50mm. The battery has to have protection board on it, as the converter does not have any protection on it. Batteries like this usually come with protection though. It can be easily seen on pictures if it does. | ??? |
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The author marked this model as their own original creation.
