Breathing life into ornaments: the smart LED dragon

The Smart Dragon is born...

I bought a beautiful glass dragon from Conwy Castle and it was sitting in a box, far too fragile to put on a shelf with kids around. I wanted to build an enclosure for it and find a way to light it up — while also creating a subtle way to monitor our solar panel system at a glance.

How it works

To a visitor, this is simply a fancy base for a glass ornament, but every pixel is programmed to convey information:

**Outer ring (red)** — shows the house battery level as a percentage

**Inner ring (blue)** — shows household electricity usage

**Remaining inner circle (green)** — animated sparkling effect showing solar production

The whole thing updates every 5 seconds and turns off automatically at night.

What you need

A glass cloche to protect your ornament

An offcut piece of 270mm × 270mm walnut for the base

A WS2812 LED ring array

An ESP8266 chip

An LED transformer (15A 5V)

A piece of diffusing plastic or glass

An enclosure for your ESP8266 chip

Build steps

1. Make the base from walnut

2. Program the ESP8266 chip

3. Polish the base

4. 3D print the case and diffuser

5. Solder the connections

6. Test it all!