Most people wanting a round ceiling matrix reach for a ready-made grid, so this build takes the road less travelled. The maker had actually bought 8x8 LED grids for the project, then decided to solder flexible strips by hand instead, using a ten dollar ceiling light as the host fixture. As a way to learn soldering on a first attempt, that seems ambitious to me, and the result looks tidy for it.
The layout is what stands out. Seven parallel strips of addressable RGB LEDs sit vertically on the inside of the round white plastic base, wired in a continuous serpentine so the whole thing reads as one circular matrix. Adjacent strip ends are linked with soldered U-shaped loops of red, grey, and white jumper wires carrying power and data, and a three-pin connector with red, green, and white wiring ties the array to the power and controller cable. Small solder pads with directional arrows and pinout markings along the strips would have helped keep the data direction straight, and getting every loop right on a first soldering run is genuinely impressive.
Driving it all is a Gledopto ESP32 mini controller, a compact choice that suits a fixture this size. The payoff is animations pulsing through blue, purple, magenta, red, yellow, and green across the circle, which must look great through the diffuser.
The obvious trade-off is the one the maker set up themselves: those 8x8 grids sit unused in favour of a lot of manual wire work. It clearly served the goal of learning to solder, but anyone after a faster route could start from the grids. The maker also jokes that this hobby will ruin them financially, and given how clean this first attempt turned out, I suspect more fixtures are coming.