Project by Michael; Infinity-Mirror Table

Michael just shared a new project: "Infinity-Mirror Table"



An infinity mirror creates a striking optical illusion - a tunnel of light that seems to tear through space. We thought it would be cool to have one to take along to MakerFaires and conventions. I built this infinity-mirror table using some addressable LEDs, a Particle Photon and easily obtainable timber supplies.

If you have any questions about building your own Infinity-Mirror Table then jump down to the comments section at the bottom of this page. If you have any other technical questions then feel free to hit us up on the forums - weā€™re full-time makers and weā€™re here to help with your projects!

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Hey Michael. Im a bit of a beginner and attempting this project. Are you able to make a more complete wiring diagram? Iā€™m a little unsure of the pots wiring and the ports used through the level shifter from the photon and to the LED strip.
Any help would be great, thanks for posting this project.

Hey, @Kelby. Hereā€™s a picture for a pot, but layed out more visually. The left connection is ground, the right connection is to 3.3V, and the center connection goes to an analogue-input of the particle. This is just replicated for each of the three pots.

As for the logic level shifter:


HV => 5V from main power supply / from Photon VIN pin
LV => 3.3V from Photon
GND => ground
LV1 => Photon D0
HV1 => Data connection to LED strip

Hi @Michael_R,
Iā€™ve finally managed to find the time to finish off all the hardware side of this project.
I did the table side of it a bit different, used table top quality glass, didnā€™t rebate it into the frame.
Hereā€™s an insitu pic:

I plan to do some changes to the code thoughā€¦ but Iā€™ve noticed a couple of thingsā€¦
With the other laser cut desktop infinity version ā€¦ the project isnā€™t linked to the more in depth tutorial (oversight?). The code is also different between those two posts (warning?).
With that in mind, should i be looking at forking the original table version to incorporate the danger zone in the tabletop version?
Cheers

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What a build! Thanks for sharing this @Kelby :slight_smile:

Iā€™d stick with the tabletop version of the code; there is no power throttling for LED brightness. We added this because the desktop version might be connected to a computer USB port which provides limited power.

The desktop version does have some other little improvements as it has matured more, however, the tabletop version is just as good for a starting point to create your own effects. Please do share them if you make new ones!

Cheers Graham,
Iā€™ve created a pull request against the GitHub (infintiy-mirror-table) code version.
I updated the original table code:
removed the defines and replaced with constants
replaced the mode selection function with a more flexible way to segment the pot (via a configurable array). It will allow modes to be added and removed without the need to reconfigure the pot segmentation.
Not sure if its the best way to do itā€¦ as iā€™ve really only stepped into c++ this week, but it works with no issues on my table.

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I get this error when trying to flash the codeā€¦

call of overloaded ā€˜map(float&, int, int, int, int)ā€™ is ambiguous

What am I doing wrong =/

Hi Brady,

It seems you have an error in your code. To be able to help you out could you share your code with us?

Thanks!

I cut and paste the code from the project page. It seems to point to an error in the following lineā€¦

infinitydefault.ino:105:39: call of overloaded ā€˜map(float&, int, int, int, int)ā€™ is ambiguous

return map(potVal,0,ADC_PREC,100,0);

Brady,

Are you using the same micro-controller as the project?

Yea, using the particle photon. Just as a test I deleted that part of the code and it flashed fine.

Try changing the floats to doubles for the PotVal. See if that helps out at all. Seems like a strange error.

Maybe I have bitten off more than I can chewā€¦

Can you show me a picture of the back side of the PCB board so I can see how all the connections are made/soldered. Or point me in the right direction of how to solder multiple connections on a PCB board.

Hi Jason,

You can find some more detailed instructions for a very similar project here:

and here:

This obviously is a little different and has only one controlling pot, but it has a nice wiring diagram so you can compare to see if your pots are hooked up properly.

As far as soldering on a through hole PCB like this one, you basically just shape the wires on the back side so they are touching and solder them together. There is nothing to it really.

Here is a great video about using these through hole boards:

Hopefully that gets you started!

I was wondering what the tint of the semi-reflective privacy film is, when I click on the link I do not get taken to the exact product and I was wondering what was used.

Hi Duke,

It looks like Bunnings doesnā€™t have it available anymore! Any mirrored window tint should work!

Bunnings have a couple of options still, though Iā€™m not sure if any are ā€œjustā€ mirror-type film.

Someone, somewhere will have some - let us know what you find!