Corflute WS2812 Seed Pixel Star

This is my addressable RGB pixel star I made in 2022 for my Christmas tree.

Design created on a computer, printed onto 5mm Corflute plastic and WS2812 5v Seed pixels added.

Here's what you'll need to make this:

1. 5mm corflute plastic - You may use blank corflute rather than printed. This will save on designing!
2. Lights - I used WS2812 5v Seed pixel lights. You could also use regular seed lights.
3. Craft knife
4. Cutting mat, or scrap wood.
5. Ruler
6. Power source for the lights (depends on what lights you use).
7. Mounting hardware for the star of your choice.

The most creative part of this project is designing what you'll create!

Anything can be made, a star, snowflakes, or character cut outs. The sky's the limit!

I'm using my light show logo's stylised star for this project.

Lessons learnt:

Gimp (free & open source) is a raster based image editor. Raster images are based per pixel of an image, which becomes 'pixelated' when the image is enlarged.

What should have been done is using a vector image editing program like InkScape (free & open source). Vector images define points and a line/curve which is drawn between the points. This means the image can be enlarged without pixelation.

I took my design to a local sign printing shop to be printed on 5mm white corflute plastic.

With some paper overtop of the printed corflute, I drafted locations for each of the seed pixel lights to be placed and a boarder to cut out.

You could also create marking locations in the computer design for more accuracy.

I used a sharp punch before cutting out in the next step.

I suggest cutting out the design before mounting lights into place.

Lay out the corflute flat onto a cutting mat, or scrap wood, and carefully use a craft knife to cut it out. Using a ruler is a great idea to cut straight lines.

TIP: Cut in multiple light passes. This gives a cleaner quality cut to the corflute.

I mounted these seed pixels by punching a hole through the corflute and pushing the excess wire between two lights through the hole. Fiction fit to hold into place. Glue can be used on the backside if needed.

But beware.... using a flat head screw driver is a bad idea. This can pierce the wire insulation!

These particular 'Seed pixel' lights can be purchased from AliExpress, Wally's Lights (USA), and a few other vendors.

Reputable vendors from China in my experience are: Ray Wu/Rita-lighting, ETOP Lighting, HarrisonTek KL lighting Store, GFLAI. Some of the Chinese vendors call these 'pebble pixels', beware that an actual pebble pixel is much larger and commonly do no use WS281x protocol.

Depending on how you have mounted lights, you may choose to cut/splice the pixel lights.

Off camera I soldered jumper wires and added 'Power injection' wiring in.

Power injection: Adding power to extra points in a string of pixels. This is needed because of voltage drop along the string.

I have a video guide on splicing these seed pixels.

I use xLights software to program my musical light show. Skip this step if you are not using programmable lights.

xLights has 2 methods of creating a custom model: Custom model editor which works like a spreadsheet or automatic camera mapper (which takes a lot of effort).

Instead I used the 3rd party service 'Light Show Hub' custom model maker. I found this much easier.

Sub models was also used for greater control of each star layer, cross and rays.

Congratulations!

You've now created a light up corflute prop with seed pixels.

Variations you may want to try gluing the lights behind corflute to make a backlit/silhouette version for a white garage door.

Happy to answer any questions or other pixel related problems.

Sincerely,

Mark Youtube.com/@NorthparkLights