I made a small LED panel

Do you know if the panels can be bodged to be non square? There shouldn't be a lot of fancy wiring to screw up if it's all WS2812. Can you (delicately) chop a few LEDs out and bridge the connections?

(hoping I have seeded this idea, so I'm not the first one to attempt this)

Sure, you can connect the LEDs together however you like (am I misunderstanding the question?).

Theoretically you can. It's whether it all goes pear shaped when you take a Dremel to the board to make it

    OO    OOOO   OO
    OO    OOOO   OO
    OO    OOOO   OO
    O    OOOOOO   O
    O    OOOOOO   O
    O    OOOOOO   O
        OOOOOOOO
        OOOOOOOO

And how fiddly it is to stitch up the edges. I shall find out in a couple of days when the panels arrive.

Oh that's what you mean! Yes, you can, but you'd have to bridge all the data connections by hand. Much easier to just leave those LEDs off in software.

Perhaps a stupid question but why not just not use those LEDs? Shut down in the software..

I mean... as a lay-person, you've got point-lights and his isolation/diffusion layers in between. If you're 3d-printing your diffusion-thingy, then you've got tons of room to play games with the shape of the final glow. Even moving light via '265μm with 64 Fiber, Optical Grade Plastic Light Guide' if you're not hitting the corners well enough.

I think you'd be far better off to make a custom PCB in whatever shape you like from the like of JLCPCB, PCBWay, or others.

The WS2812s here all connect to each other in series, so if you cut the board down, you'll have to replace the cut connections with bodge wires. To my mind, that plus the cutting is way more work than just making a PCB in exactly the shape you want.

You can get cheap PCBs for $5-$6 for qty 5 100mm x 100mm boards delivered to your door in the US. Add on LEDs at $0.03 to $0.05 each and I'd way rather make than modify here.

Because you want the panel to fit a non-square shape, with no room for "leftovers" - think making it round to fit in a doorknob hole or oval to go in place of a car brand badge, etc.

In that case, it would definitely be much cheaper to design a custom PCB and get it assembled. It would probably take you much less time than all the cutting and soldering.

That... is a really good idea. I was thinking of cutting a flat piece of diffusing material to shape.

My intuition is that there would be pain in 3d printing a diffusion structure because slicers etc. would not be optimised for producing a homogenous solid. I would guess that 100% infill is actually something like 99.98% with tiny voids that stick out like a sore thumb when you shine a light through. I might be wrong about that, I'm not a 3d printing expert.

The principle of reshaping I think is awesome though. It might just be an issue of modulating brightness to counter any uneven distribution. It's got me thinking about a Faceted approach. 3d Print a faceted basin and then print a thin edge divider to sit in it. Fill it with something that sets solidly enough and makes a good diffuser (this too sounds like a war with bubbles). Take it out of the basin when set and you potentially have a nice faceted surface with each facet individually colourable.

you're right at re-inventing "prismatic acrylic flat sheet replacement light cover" stuff.

https://www.fluorolite.com/buy-now/f12-100-2347flatsheet/

for a cheap test, put wax paper between two grids/grilles and see how it looks (ie: double-diffusion). ie: [ LED | <grid> | <wax paper> | <grid> | <wax paper> ]

...the first grid isolates the color, the first wax paper diffuses the LED, the second grid "receives" the isolated color (diffused, not spot/point) which then gets finally diffused for viewing.

Surely you can look up how to avoid bubbles on a semi-transparent resin pour.

>Surely you can look up how to avoid bubbles on a semi-transparent resin pour.

I know how that's done (usually a combination of careful stirring and a vacuum chamber). The principle is easier than the practice. I am dispraxic and generally shouldn't be allowed near physical objects, but I like them so.

Poke at blender / sketchup!

https://blenderartists.org/t/how-do-i-put-a-soft-glowing-led...

...all the joy of creation with none of the cost or danger of losing fingertips! :-P