Add a 1337 Matrix-Style Panel to Your PC

There are many truths in this world that science has yet to confirm. Racing stripes make cars go faster, wallet chains make dudes better at fighting, and RGB LEDs make gaming PCs more powerful — no matter what "scientists" and "engineers" tell you. To give your PC that extra oomph, you could buy a keyboard or case laden with thousands of LEDs. But those off-the-shelf products won't give you much geek street cred. In order to prove that you're truly 1337, you should build Will Donaldson's Matrix Computer Side Panel.

The Matrix Resurrections is currently in theaters and renewing our nostalgia for the 1999 cyberpunk classic. That movie is chock full of iconic imagery, but nothing is as memorable as the falling green hacker text used to represent the code that defines the virtual world Thomas Anderson initially inhabits. If you're old enough, you likely had that green text as a screensaver at some point. But now you can build something a little more physical. At first glance, this looks like an LCD showing one of those old screensavers, but it is actually a panel backlit by LEDs and much cheaper than an LCD.

Donaldson's project consists of three key components: a laser-cut panel to mask the LEDs, strips of individually addressable RGB LEDs, and a development board to control the LEDs. The development board is a NodeMCU with an ESP8266 microcontroller. The LEDs are WS2812B NeoPixels. If you want, you can order the custom PCB to simplify your wiring, but it isn't required. Assemble the circuit according to the tutorial and then put together the laser-cut frame and panel. Then, cut a window in your PC case's side panel. Finally, you can flash the provided code to the NodeMCU. You can either use the traditional green lighting or you can get creative with other colors — or even rainbow effects.