(Tutorial) Make A Rainbow Unicorn Wall Light

In this quick guide, we'll show you how to easily make a Rainbow Unicorn Wall Light! All you need is a microcontroller, some ultra skinny neopixel strips from Adafruit, a 3D printer and two colors of filament. Let's get started!

What You'll Need:

To get started, you'll need the following parts:

1. CircuitPython compatible development board (CP Sapling Rev B used in this tutorial: CP Sapling m0 Development Board). You can also use either of the Adafruit Qt Py.
2. MicroUSB data cable or USB-C if using a Qt Py.
3. Power Supply With A Power Switch: Like This One On Amazon
4. Ultra Skinny NeoPixel Strip from Adafruit: www.adafruit.com/product/4368
5. Mu Editor (Get that HERE) or the Arduino IDE
6. A 3D Printer (We used a Creality Ender 3 Pro)
7. And the Zip folder with the STL Files for printing

unicorn_wall_light.zip
File Size:	21 kb
File Type:	zip

Download File

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​Getting Everything Wired Up

For this project, we are going to solder the following wires to the following pins on our microcontroller. It's easier to solder these wires to microcontroller boards with no header pins soldered on.

1. Red 5V Wire --> 5V/USB pin of our microcontroller board
2. Black Ground Wire --> GND pin of our microcontroller board
3. Green Data Wire --> Any digital pin on your microcontroller. (We use an Arduino Nano clone and solder to pin D3)

3D Printing The Enclosure:

To print the files, you will need to open the files using a slicing program. A slicing program transforms the STL files to GCODE files that the 3D printer can understand. There are plenty of slicer software out there, we opt to use Ultimaker CURA. You'll want to slice using the following settings:

• Material: PLA
• Nozzle Temperature: 200C
• Bed Temperature: 60C
• Layer Height 0.2mm

The file for the top portion of the light will need to be rotated so the surface areas is on the bottom. If you are not using a fine precision printer, you will want to scale the bottom piece (the larger piece) to 101% to make sure that the top fits properly for the enclosure. 

We printed the enclosure in black for the bottom, and white for the top, but you can use any light colored or transparent filament for the top, and any dark filament for the bottom.

The Code:

Depending on what you want to code your light show in for the NeoPixel Strip, you can use the following animation code from Adafruit to program your microcontroller. You will need to make sure you change the NeoPixel count to 75 since the ultra skinny strips have 75 NeoPixels, and change the data pin to the pin that you soldered the green data wire to.

You can find the code examples on the Adafruit NeoPixel UBER Guide.

The Final Result:

After everything has finished printing and you've soldered up your board and NeoPixels, it's time to put it together. We chose to adhere the NeoPixel strip to the top portion of the enclosure and let the microcontroller freely hand in the enclosure. You can chose how you install the electronic bits, but the over all result should be stunning either way. 

For the power supply, we pushed it through the hole of the bottom portion and plugged it into our microcontroller. To make the end result a little more secure, you can apply some super glue around the cable through the entry hole.

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