Anyone who has tried to give a handmade present to a whole batch of kids knows the challenge: it has to be repeatable, fun, and personal all at once. The maker tackled that head-on by designing a customizable nightlight running WLED, built as a Christmas gift for every niece and nephew in the family. That is a serious production run for a single-person project, and the result looks like it holds up.
The construction is a three-part stack: a dark blue rectangular base with a matching top cap, and a translucent white cylindrical diffuser column standing between them. The base and cap appear to be 3D printed, and all the CAD work was done in Onshape. Inside, an ESP32 board drives a flexible 16 by 16 LED matrix, which is a notable choice here. It is not one long spiral of pixels, so effects can be mapped onto a proper grid.
A small push button on the base top cycles through several animation modes, and the variety stands out: shifting pastel blobs in pink, purple, and yellow; a rising red and orange flame-like glow; a rotating blue and yellow wave; a cool blue and white shimmer; a pulsing magenta and purple nebula; and a gently undulating red, white, and blue tricolor stack. The cut-out lettering on the base front also lights from within, which seems a smart touch for a personal gift.
It is still a work in progress. The maker says adjustments are ongoing but is happy with the initial result, and the parts list has been started but is not complete yet. No build pictures or assembly instructions exist so far, though help has been offered to anyone asking.