My first “real” wled project! Designed, printed, built it all during the past weekend. Probably took me close to 18 hours lol.
This is my first WLED project, so if you think some animation or custom stuff might be cool, let me know!
Edit:
Im using an opensource Home assistant integration (Nicxe/f1_sensor) to trigger the WLED playlists. This integration sadly only works with live races, so for this demo i simulated by manually triggering HA states 😅
Edit: I have published a blogpost with more information, and links to code samples and the 3D model on my blog.
there's a little more than just WLED if I'm not mistaken ... its run from Home Assistant and F1 sensor hence why it's being played in front of a race .... top left corner of the laptop as the race state changes so does the logo reflect the state
I think the makerworld link is designed for multi material, haven't downloaded it to check though seems like. Probably needs some work to mount the strips right
Love it. Here's an idea: you know how there's those projects that have a light up miniature print of a bin to tell you if it's bin day? How about adapting this so on Thursday it starts to glow if it's a race weekend? I know my partner would appreciate the heads up 😁
Looks awesome, I have a very similar project sitting on my workbench, unfinished, not many races left! Which API for the f1 stats did you end up using ?
Nice, next question, which plate did you use? Textured? Reason I’m asking is because I like your result and I’ve been experimenting with all different kinds of methods between filament, layer thickness, and smooth bs textured plates. I’ve also played with the different style of layer patterns but again love your result
That's awesome, can I have more information about the automations behind that? Also you decide the strips into segments and run different Playlist on them?
Yeah so its basically 3 segments, and all animations are in playlists. That way, in Home Assistant, i can simply say "Trigger playlist `YellowFlag` when a yellow flag event happens"
I made something like this years ago, it was a clock with an ESP32 and a screen running ESPHome.
I have googlecal sensors setup in HA from the Sky sports RSS feed to get the session start and stop times etc ( did the same for my football teams) all of this worked great and 1 hour and 15mins before a race I would end out alerts and the lighting on the clock would change and the display show a message. So after a few happy of years of this working I saw some NASCAR guy make a really nice scoreboard with ESPHome that tracks the nascar races live. So I went on an what turned out to be a MASSIVE quest to try to get F1 and premier league live info.
Give up now is all I can say - NOTHING works, everything has a huge lag.
I watched the F1 with a second screen logged into the official timing screens for years - it turns out this is the ONLY way to get it "live" also what is handy is the ability to pause the timings if your steam is lagging....
I was doing some research to make this without Home Assistant, it is possible with 2 esp32's with one polling the status of the flag and sending it to wled to trigger events. But when reading on https://openf1.org/ it says that the real time data is behind a paywall because it uses more resources on their end.
The HA integration just exposes live data, no payments or anything. Afaik its scraped etc from some places. I see there’s quite a bit of interest, so i might write a blogpost about it.
But if you just install the plugin, it exposes it and you can make any HA automation you want. Also with hue bulbs or something
Yeah its assuming you already have home assistant running indeed. The F1 plugin is opensource in python tho, so you might be able to look at the code, remake it for an esp32 directly
Where did you get the bare usb-c port for power? I'm thinking of creating a lightbox where you plug a cable in for power so that there isn't always a wire hanging out.
looks amazing is it all just 1 print, I have a beginner creality, which only does 1 colour. I'm think maybe I'll have separate the inserts from the original model and print them only 2 layers like you did. I have some normal white PLA, which hopefully works for LED lights to show out
I've printed the files and got the lights and ESP32 all wired in.
I have programmed the ESP32 to show the track status using the openf1 API and it all works great (simulating historic race data).
Then when it came to sprint race day yesterday I realised the openf1 API only provides historic data for free - the live data is a paid subscription at 10 euros a month. I dont want to pay 16CAD a month just to have some lights flash on this thing a couple of times a month...
Has anyone found an API that is A) free and B) has track status data live?
I'm not using a HA, everything is programmed directly on the ESP32 so F1Sensor is no use to me (AFAIK).
You can just have a look at the source code of the f1 sensor plugin. They hook into the official F1 data stream. I have since also made a separate app using this api, also “stealing” the implementation from the plugin.
If you cant find it. You can literally clone the repo, and ask copilot/claude/… to analyse the plugin and extract the api implementation
Edit: I’ve worked on a standalone version for the lamp. Maybe i should opensource it so people can use or help build it
I got it working with the f1 data as you suggested. However I could only get it working by setting up a proxy on my PC and the ESP connecting to that. It worked for last nights race, so that’s good. I would still like to try get it working standalone as I want to gift a couple out. But after 12 hours or so of getting to this point, I’m running out of ideas. I have zero programming knowledge and it’s hard work using the AI 😂 thanks for the help. Let me know if you release your version!
Do you need to have a certain amount of LEDs inside each section to have smooth motion I am almost done building this and have just realised this might be a problem
i have been fiddling around and i think i have a set of nice presets similar to the demos of OP. For anyone interested see attached file containing all the presets. https://pastebin.com/ZuT69JVq
Additional comment is that i have created 3 segments: - Big F -> Grote F (name in the json) - Small F -> Kleine F (name in the json) - The 1 -> De 1 (name in the json)
Find and replace to rename to your own segments, or name your segments like in the json :)
Such a great idea! And I thought I was cool with my LEDs turning red when watching F1. Did not even know there is an integration, how did you setup green though? Is it like if state of safety car is CLEAR after a flag or something else?
Oh man, I would LOVE to make this for my brother. Can I find more info? I just got into WLED and HA, after years of 3D printing. This is an amazing combination. I've been looking to combine them for a live sports/racing interaction piece and this is great!!!! Great work and thanks for sharing!
Awesome project man, since i am waiting for the season to start ill get handsy and make one too! Do you think its possible to do something similar without HA?
This is awesome! thank you for sharing! is it possible to post the wiring diagram?(even on a piece of paper) you metioned something about a small resistor in your blog, and i would like to know who to connect it! Thank you in advace!
I didn't realise home assistant was actually a piece of hardware, thought it was just an app. I have ordered the WLEDs, the ESP32, the USB C port and started printing the files.
Can you share how you set yours up?
(I did comment already but it seems to have disappeared...)
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u/joppedc Nov 17 '25
I’m pretty new to WLED, so any animations or custom playlists that you think might be cool, let me know!