Millennium Falcon-Inspired Control Panel
The Last Outpost Workshop's light-up panel features a Star Wars look with ESP32 control and fantastic LED diffusion.
Decades after its premiere, the Star Wars universe is still entertaining fans worldwide. While there’s no shortage of new official materials, DIY creators like YouTuber The Last Outpost Workshop have taken things into their own hands. In his latest video, ‘Outpost made two Millennium Falcon-inspired control panels.
The panels were designed in Adobe Illustrator, and laser cut in sections as they were too long to fit into the machine. Panels were then painted a nice Star Wars black, with white stripes that would fit in nicely on the original movie set. Inside the panels, ‘Outpost arranged a number of LEDs in switches and round holes, along with LED-enabled square acrylic sections to indicate… whatever the plot demands.
Each of the panels are controlled by an ESP32 dev board, which generates a local web server as a user interface. These incorporate over-the-air programming, so that panels don’t have to be taken apart for code tweaks. They look fantastic sitting above a screen at the end of the video, and should be a fun bit of extra entertainment.
The panel setup is a fun overall build, but what really stand out in my mind is how well the acrylic panels are diffused. This effect is accomplished via a clever process involving wrapping the panels with aluminum tape, outlined in the extra sub-three minute clip below.