5 ESP32-powered WLED lighting projects to make this weekend (Aug 7 - 9)

Published Aug 7, 2026, 11:30 AM EDT Tim has been covering technology for almost 20 years, in that time spanning a broad range of topics from security to product reviews. He is especially focused on the Apple ecosystem, productivity, and consumer advice. Over the years Tim has written thousands of articles, reviews, and round-ups in addition to producing video content and original photography. A graduate of journalism, he found his footing as a freelancer with a laptop and loves how he is able to work from practically anywhere. Now a Senior Editor for iPhone, Mac, and Smart Home at How-To Geek, Tim still loves to write. He can also be found crafting round-ups and productivity posts for the Zapier blog. Earlier in his career Tim spent nearly a decade as a writer and eventually Apple section editor for MakeUseOf. Tim currently lives in Brisbane, Australia. Outside of work he loves to hike and work out, play video games, and spend quality time with his wonderful partner and two cats Inka and Roger. WLED lets you control multiple LED strips at a time using a single microcontroller. It’s accessible in that you can flash the firmware with a web browser, and minimal soldering is necessary. WLED can be controlled with a browser or a web app, and it even integrates natively with Home Assistant. Here are some projects to inspire you to start playing around with WLED. Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32C3 The Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32-C3 is the perfect budget-friendly microcontroller for smart home projects. With Wi-Fi and Bluetooth built-in, it also features a super deep sleep mode for low power usage when it isn't doing anything. The compact size makes this ideal for building smart home projects, and ESPHome allows it to easily integrate into Home Assistant. Adafruit NeoPixel Digital RGB LED Strip The Adafruit NeoPixel Digital RGB LED Strip comes in four sizes, ranging from one meter to four meters. Offering an extremely dense 60 LEDs per meter, this LED strip offers individually addressable LEDs so you can create fully custom lighting scenes using just one LED strip. Upcycling IKEA (and other) lamps Just add WLED You don’t need to reinvent the wheel to improve your home’s lighting. Much of the time, commercial design is far better than anything you can come up with at home—even if the lighting hardware is a let-down. IKEA’s donut-shaped Varmblixt is the perfect example of this. This iconic design fuses smooth glass with diffused lighting, and it’s the perfect candidate for a WLED upgrade. Reddit user u/clarkinum did exactly this with a relatively simple hardware swap. The project incorporates a single WS2812B LED strip, ESP32-C3 microcontroller, and a 2A USB charger in parallel. There’s a single segment (18 LEDs) for the first three rotations, with 14 and 12 LEDs for the fourth and fifth rotations, respectively, on account of the narrowing design. LuxPlant No water necessary The LuxPlant is the best kind of faux-plant. It’s not trying to imitate nature, but rather combine organic-inspired decor and lighting into one soothing multicolored package. The project was inspired by Fluora Plant, a retail product that you can buy straight up if you don’t fancy building your own. At present, only the LuxPlant Mini is available, with nine leaves and three stems. It costs $5 for the 3D printing STL file and assembly instructions, plus you’ll have to provide the LED hardware and ESP32 yourself. In time, the author intends to release the LuxPlant Standard, with 20 leaves and five stems. You can see the plant in motion over on Reddit, where the author posted it. Dynamic F1 Logo Lightbox An amazing concept you can run with I’m not the biggest F1 fan in the world, but you don’t need to be to appreciate this project. The Dynamic F1 Logo Lightbox is a project from maker Joppe De Cuyper, combining the iconic F1 branding with an LED-powered light strip that reacts to live race data. The setup is rather genius, while being simple enough to understand at first glance. The logo itself is a 3D-printed design, which you can grab on MakerWorld. Inside is an ESP32 microcontroller connected to an LED strip, which has been routed to follow the shape of the logo. WLED has been flashed onto the ESP32, which is connected to Home Assistant on the backend. This uses the F1 Sensor integration to grab live race data, which is used to change the state of the LED strip in real-time. Events like a red flag, yellow flag, and safety car will cause the lights to change color and flash in designated patterns. Joppe has shared their full automation YAML for all to see. You could easily use the concept (and code) as a springboard for similar ideas using other live data sensors. If you can get it into Home Assistant, you can push it to WLED and have some fun with it! LED matrix projection with a fresnel lens A project to project Credit: u/Flughafen / Reddit In addition to LED strips, WLED can control LED matrices too. In fact, many LED matrices already come with WLED included, which makes them relatively plug-and-play. Of course, there’s nothing stopping you from wiring up your own matrix to a microcontroller and having some fun. These LED assemblies can be incredibly bright, which inspired Reddit user u/Flughafen to build a WS2812 projector using a cheap 18x12 cm magnifier as a fresnel lens and a custom resin lens matrix. The build has been documented on the Printables page, complete with downloadable 3D printing files if you have the right sort of printer. Matrix flame lamp Can a candle do this? Credit: Genei180 / Printables I have a bit of a fascination with creating faux flame effects with LED strips, so I find builds like the Matrix Flame Lamp incredibly appealing. This is another project where you can use an existing lamp design if you want (specifically the IKEA Grönö), but the whole thing is 3D printable if you don’t have one to hand. The finished effect uses a 16x16 LED matrix to create the illusion of flames, but it also works well with effects like plasma, color gradients, and all manner of WLED’s built-in effects. It’s a simple project that looks great and is a lot safer than having naked flames in your home. Looking for more inspiring ESP32 designs? Check out last week’s collection of projects that you’ll probably never make.