Infinity Mirror Build

Over the course of the past few years, I accrued a large amount of LED strip lighting. It remained rolled up on a spool as I tried to decide what to do with it.

Then one magical day I saw a post about an infinity mirror. It was cool. Easy-ish to build and I just happened to have most of the necessary components on hand. Having components on-hand is important if you’re easily distracted.

So I looked into what’s involved. Strip LEDs? Check! A spare Arduino UNO? Check! A pocket picture frame? AKA The Ribba frame from Ikea? Check!

So now it’s build time! Found out a few things about the frame once I started to insert LEDs around it. You need to cut down the inner frame to accommodate the four strips (one on each side).

Little bit of soldering, little bit of programming in Arduino and presto!

Then I bit the bullet and bought mirror tiles 12″ x 12″ for my 9″ x 9″ frame. Which meant needing to buy a glass cutter. Just as an FYI, if you’re not trained to cut glass, it’s a little harrowing. Of course, having a real mirror as the back reflector made the production look so much better.

I started to play with adding button functionality to change animations and speed, but that’s just showin’ off, as my grandfather used to say.

While this has the potential to be fussed with ad infinitum I’d say this project is finished. If you’re interested in having a workshop on building an infinity mirror in a group setting, head on over to the Infinity Mirror Workshop page.

UPDATE! During my workshop with Art & Science, it was discovered that, in fact, the mirror film has a plastic sheeting on it and is adhesive. The spray included in the order of film a soapy mixture. I’d seen how-to videos on applying glass film before and realized this was similar in practice. Here is a brief timelapse of the process.