This decorative sci-fi panel puts the spotlight on custom-designed PCBs, fully exposed and beautifully backlit. Four identical circuit boards equipped with LEDs create a glowing, tech-forward aesthetic, held together by 3D printed structural elements. It’s functional art built for a spaceship-themed world or at least your wall.

I built this panel as part of the Youtube video below, which goes in-depth on the subject of greebles and props.

First, PCBs

To make your own, you'll need to get the PCBs ordered first, because there will probably be a bit of a wait time on that order (1-2 weeks or so). The PCBs are the ones that give this that cool real look, so there's no way around it. On the positive side, they should be rather cheap.

You will want to go to this project and either straight order it through PCBWay (you can also get the LEDs+resistors assembled, won't be that cheap anymore but zero hassle), or you can download the gerber files and reupload them to your PCB provider of choice.

Note: Don't solder wires before mounting.

3D Printed Parts

Now it's easy. To get the 3D print files, head over to the Printables project.

In the photos there are 2 assemblies together. Depending on how many PCBs you made you could have only 1 assembly or extend to more.

So print one InnerPCBsMount per assembly. You can have a color change if you want to highlight the traces like in the photos.

Then print as many corners as you need for your setup, nothing special there. You can either use Corner2PCBMount everywhere and it will look cool even on the ends, or you could use the Corner1PCBMount on ends if you like that look better or you are short on space.

If you still don't want to order PCBs but you want to have this, I guess you could also print the PCB footprint from the pcbgreeble-WholeAssembly.STEP file but that would really hurt my soul.

Wire Up

Great, now you are ready to wire everything together. I designed some slots in both the PCBs and the InnerPCBsMount for easy snag-free wire routing. So you'll mount the PCBs to the 3D printed "cross", then you'll have to solder one side of the wire, route it all the way to the other pad and solder the second end.

Now power it up at 5V and enjoy.

Back Board

The color the back board is painted in will influence how much the back lighting bounces back, so if you go for matte black, you'll have a very subtle effect even in a dark-ish room. I went for grey, but if you want it to be visible in daylight, I'd say go for white or off-white.