Once your segments are all set up and saved in your All Segments preset, it's time to make individual presets that light up each segment in the color and animation mode you like best.
WLED Presets are a way to "save" your favorite effect-and-color modes. They also accept JSON code, so you can use them to do things like turn the lights all on or off, string together multiple presets (make a playlist), create custom modes and much more. Here's the WLED Presets Knowlege Base page -- check it out to learn more.
Select the background of the segment (it's selected when it's gray instead of black). Click the "power" button to turn it on, and make sure all the other segments are turned off.
Select the effect and the color you'd like for your message -- I used "solid" for everything, and used a variety of colors -- and then create a preset to save the state.
Select the "Apply at Boot" checkbox on the preset you'd like to appear when the project is powered up.
Keep the "Save Segment Bounds" checkbox checked but do NOT check the "Checked Segments Only" box in this case. We want to save the state of ALL the segments -- the ones that are off need to stay off, and checking this box will ignore the state of the non-checked segments so you may end up with two messages on at the same time.
For the quotes at the bottom that have two segments / two LED strips, I made one preset that turns on both segments while the rest stay off.
You can run different animations or colors on each segment and still have them controlled by one preset. Nifty!
To update an existing preset, click the "overwrite with state" checkbox before saving.
Once you have all your message presets set up with the colors you like, set up one more preset that turns all the lights off.
You can either uncheck all the segments, or choose "black" as your color, or you can use HTTP code (T=0) in the API command box (uncheck the "overwrite with state" box to find this).
More about using API commands in WLED
Take note of the preset number since we'll need to use it when we set up our button.
Finally, we'll make a playlist that we can trigger using our motion sensor. A playlist is a listing of presets that allows us to set a duration and an order for our presets and have them auto-play.
We can also "shuffle" the playlist in order to get a (pseudo) random order. On the next page we'll set up the motion sensor to trigger this playlist.
Click the +Playlist button at the bottom of the Preset column. Add each of your presets and set a time for how long you'd like each message to play. Make it a little longer than you need -- I chose 10 seconds.
Do not put your "off" preset in this playlist, only the lighted messages.
Click the "shuffle" checkbox and the "repeat indefinitely" checkbox. Take note of the playlist's number (18 in my case) and click Save.
Select the preset and watch all your quotes appear one by one.
Page last edited September 30, 2025
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