This is a project I came up with after buying a strip of RGB LED's from Adafruit.com based on the LPD8806. Making the strip light up is fun, but I felt like it needed a home to be mounted into, so I decided to make a 3d model to house the strip of LED's.
This LED strip is made up of 32 sections (each with 2 LEDs and 1 control chip) that you can cut into individual pieces and use separately or as a whole. It uses 2 wires from the Arduino (clock pin and data pin) to control the entire strip at once. It also requires a 5v and Gnd connection, which can be supplied from the Arduino as well.
I have always liked those little 7-segment LED units that you stick on a breadboard, so I thought why not make a huge one of those?
So I headed over to Tinkercad and began to build a single segment of the 7-segment cluster that would hold 1 piece of the LED strip (with 2 LED's on it). From there, I cloned the first piece and connect 7 of them together. I also had to make a small inset at the top for the LED strip to sit on and some cutouts between the segments to allow the wires to pass through.
I ended up printing a second segment and making a base to connect them together and hold them upright. The base also serves as a place to mount the Arduino (I used an Arduino nano).
The idea is to print it with the clear PLA filament and normal 25% infill, and let the filament act as a difuser to spread the light around. It worked out really well looks nice when lit up.
Here are the models:
