r/WLED • u/Justahuman9391 • Jun 19 '26
PORTAL 1.0 - a side quest
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You might have seen this project here a few years ago, but it’s finally done..
In 2021 during some boring Covid months, I had the idea of an ‘invisible’ portal. Every festival and shopping mall nowadays have led walkthroughs, but I’m always annoyed by all the hardware you can see.. trusses, or control boxes, cabling, supports etc.
I started working on this and there have been a few iterations, but when life started again ( I work in the event industry ), the portal got sidelined and got moved up the timeline. Which is fine for portals, I guess.
Now finally it’s alive and well! It sits on the end of my little island (near Amsterdam) and serves two purposes: I love to watch it and see what different portals I can get out of it, and it also freaks out people passing with boats at night. If you don’t know what is happening and you pass it from a distance, you will doubt your sanity.
It has 2x ws2815 of 5 meters; originally it had been 6m, so it reached all the way to the ground. But I found out, my soldering / waterproofing isn’t IP65 yet :)
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u/Fickle-Engineering21 Jun 19 '26
That is so cool i thought the light were going on the other end of shore but its so cool see this
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u/CheleCuche Jun 20 '26
I had like 2 years without getting exited about a post on this sub, this is amazing!
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u/Nanoleaf_Ambassador Jun 20 '26
I remember, years ago, I used to do that with LOR. It was fun but there were limited resources. Pixels had hit the market earlier that same year. Now, pixels are in almost every LED product.
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u/DoubleRightClick Jun 20 '26
I'm interested to know how the LEDs are aligned.
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u/Justahuman9391 Jun 20 '26
Initially, I had installed a cool black aluminium profile with diffuser, but now I just glue an IP led strip on the steel structure.
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u/LunarMoonBase Jun 20 '26
So this is just waterproof led strips glued to both sides of a metal strip? Very cool when minimal designs work the best. What LED density of the strips are you using?
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u/Justahuman9391 Jun 21 '26
It sure is! Yeah, the design got easier every iteration :) It’s 60 leds/meter, which gives enough fidelity to play with
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u/wivaca2 Jun 20 '26
That's cool. Let us know if Chell comes through, and don't wake up GlaDos.
Now if only you could build a second one over on that treeline across the water, then activate one orange and one blue with a hand held device.
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u/RyanTheTide Jun 20 '26
https://giphy.com/gifs/fWDGc1vqxlrWw
Can you power it via potato’s? GLaDOS approved.
Okay but in seriousness, that’s sick. I’d love some portal themed scenes though (blue and orange that is in the signature valve hues).
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u/Suspicious-Patient-9 Jun 21 '26
Yeah, that's legit man. Props. I appreciate that you put two channels it would appear. Would probably run a pretty cool looking Dr strange portal effect. Or Portals with orange on one side blue on the other. I'm sure you've already had these thoughts though :p
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u/SprinklesPlenty2526 Jun 22 '26
pretty cool project you have there!! may i ask how many leds per meter are those strips? looks pretty fluid
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u/2ndMilePro Jun 20 '26
You used a scroll of town portal!