Spiral Vase Rose Lighted Stand

This stand was designed to add lights to the original Spiral Vase Rose by lytta. It uses a WLED  instance on an ESP32 to drive a single 12 element light ring. The cover is designed to diffuse the output of the light into rose and limit the amount of light that bleeds out. 

The below instructions may look intimidating if you have never used WLED before. I can assure the process is actually quite simple. I have attempted to walk you through setting it up with detailed directions which should get your light working in the same way as mine.

Printing the base:

I printed the “Full Size” rose in Transparent PETG. The base is in a dual color gold/pink PLA with a white PLA cover. The cover is printed in white PLA and is designed to printed with the top of the cover on the build plate.

Wiring it up:

The ESP32 is designed to be installed upside down (pins up) and held in place by 4 short self-tapping M3 screws but can be hot-glued into place. The built in USB should align nicely with the opening. 

The button should fit neatly in the hole above and is held in place with the included washer and nut. Be sure to mount the button before you connect the wires to the ESP32.

Light ring connections:

• 5V DC of the ring to the VIN pin of the ESP32
• GND of the ring to the GND pin of the ESP32
• Data Input on the right to the D13 pin of the EP32

Button connections:

• One wire (doesn't matter which) to the GND pin on the ESP32
• One wire (doesn't matter which) to the D15 pin on the ESP32

The version of ESP32 board I used offers  VIN, GND, and D13 right next to each other. On the other side of the board is GND and D15. You can solder the wires directly to the pins on the ESP32 or you can use crimp on JST/DuPont connectors. I used JST connectors and pushed them onto the pins for easy wiring.

Install WLED:

The installation of WLED is very simple. You connect your ESP32 to a computer and use an online installer tool (https://install.wled.me/). The tool will flash the software to the chip and walk you through adding it to a WIFI network. A more detailed guide is available at the WLED wiki: https://kno.wled.ge/basics/install-binary/

Setting up WLED:

I have shared both the cfg.json and presets.json that I used for my base here. Assuming you used the same pins (see the above wiring) this should work for you without any further modification.

Upload config (cfg.json):

Navigate to the device using a web browser on the same network using the IP address of the ESP32 (192.168.1.xxx) and you will be presented with the WLED interface where you can choose colors, effects, and presets.

At the top of this screen, click the Config button. 

Select, LED preferences.

Scroll to the bottom and you see a place to attach and upload the cfg.json. Select the file you downloaded and click apply:

At this point you should see your lights turn on (probably solid orange). You should be able to tap the button and see the lights turn off and on.

Uploading the presets (presets.json):

In your web browser, navigate to your WLED IP and add “/edit” at the end (192.168.1.xxx/edit) and you should get a screen with a “Refresh List” button in the top left.

Click choose file and select the presets.json file. You should see /presets.json in the file name box. Click upload.

Go back to the main menu by navigating to your WLED IP (192.168.1.xxx) and you should see presets created on the right hand side of the screen.

Setting up the button:

“ The default (built-in) actions for button 0 are short-press: toggle on/off and long-press: select random color. Long-pressing for more than 6 seconds will open the WLED-AP with the default password (wled1234). Hold it down for >12 seconds and flash memory is erased.” (https://kno.wled.ge/features/macros/)

I also like a double-tap to cycle through the presets we created above. In order to set that up, go back into the Config Menu and click Time and Macros.

In the section labeled Button Actions set the third column behind Button 0 to “99”

Sourcing:

The Led (any 12 element LED): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KAE3R1U/

The Switch (any 12MM momentary switch):  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C2H1QL2L/

ESP32 (The mount is sized for a 30-Pin ESP32 Devkit breakout board) :  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B086MGH7JV/

For more information on flashing and using WLED: https://kno.wled.ge/

Thank you!

I hope you enjoy my little project. if you have any questions or suggestion, please leave a comment below or send me a message here.