WLED Segments
For this project, I want to be able to light up the head in solid red, the eyes in white, and the tail in various rainbow or colored animated effects with a mirror effect so the left and right sides animate in sync with each other. In WLED, this is easily done using Segments.
When you first set up WLED, there's one segment pre-defined, and it's called Segment 0. This segment includes all the lights.
Click the "add segment" button and create a new segment called Tail. Starting with LED 0, enter the number of lights sewn to the tail. Click the "check" button and look at your lights.
Select "solid" under effects and choose a color.
If all your lights (including the head) change to that color, click the "power" button to turn Segment 0 off and be sure the power button on the Tail segment is active. This should turn on the LEDs in your tail, and only those LEDs.
Verify that it's lighting up the area you want and adjust the numbers if it's not.
Click the Mirror Effect box if you want your tail's left and right sides to mirror each other, running the same animation at the same time. I love the way this looks on my dragon.
Save this first segment before moving on. Otherwise you may do a lot of intricate mapping work and then discover that poof ! It's gone forever.
Segment layout can be saved using a Preset. Click the + Preset button and call your preset All Segments. Use the default settings and click "save".
Segments are preset-specific, meaning that different presets can (and often do) use completely different segment layouts. If you don't save your work in a preset, and then you select another preset that only has Segment 0 defined, all your segments will vanish.
This can be frustrating! So save early and save often. To update the preset after you've added more segments, click the "overwrite with state" checkbox and then click Save.
Make a segment for the head and another segment for the eyes, using the pixel numbers in each of those areas. It's ok if they overlap.
I made the eyes solid white, and the head a solid color that matched my dragon (red / yellow).
Each segment can have its own animation and color choice. This is the fun part: play around and see what kind of beautiful combinations you can make.
Click the check box on the segment you want to affect, then choose an effect and a color. Once you have all three segments looking the way you want, save your light mode as a preset.
WLED 16 also allows you to layer different effects on segments. You can make two segments for the same section of lights (i.e. tail 1 and tail 2) and run two different animations on that section at the same time. This allows you to use a base / background color and then layer a moving animation over the top. Play around to see what effects you can create.
Page last edited May 26, 2026
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