Color Adjustable Infinity Mirror

Color adjustable Infinity Mirror

1/4 inch Birch Wood

12x12 in Acryllic Mirror

12x12 in One-Way Mirror (sometimes also called a Two-Way Mirror)

3.3 ft LED Light Strip (can help if it's cuttable between any two lights)

Breadboard (830 tie points)

3x 45mm Slide Potentiometers

Raspberry Pi Pico H w/ Headers

Breadboard ties and Jumper Wires

USB-C Data Cable

Hot Glue

Wood Glue

Setup

Wire up your breadboard so that you can use your three potentiometers as inputs for the LED lights. Each potentiometer is associated with one color in the RGB (red/green/blue) scale.

Note: The slide potentiometers have three pins, #1 = Power, #2 = Signal, and #3 = Ground. Make sure that the power source used is 3.3 volts (pico pin 36) rather than the standard 5v output. Also, be sure to connect the Signal wire to an analog pin on the pico (pins 34, 32, or 31).

Once you have verified the potentiometers are working as expected in the following code, add some hot glue around the sides to secure them in place.

Coding

For my code to work (attached below), you'll need to use the same pins that I did. I used all of the analog pins available on the Pico (see above), and plugged my lights into pin 1.

Be sure to use pin 40 to power the lights to get the full 5 volts!

Troubleshooting

In my setup, the #1 and #2 pins on these potentiometers are parallel to the terminal strips on the breadboard, yet they need to be attached to unique strips to work properly. I bent one pin forwards and one pin backward to support this.

Be sure to use the same ground rail for both the potentiometers and the pico. Otherwise, it won't correctly read their input.

If using a long breadboard like I am, be sure to connect the top and bottom rails. See the blue wires in the above picture.

The attached file will work to laser cut a box for mirrors that are 12x12 inches.

Once you have verified that your box will fit your mirrors, go ahead and use some wood glue to attach the sides and bottom of the box

The inner rails are basically a topless and bottomless box that are used for mounting the lights and providing the gap between the mirrors that allows for the illusion.

One Raspberry Pi Pico will power approximately 60 LED lights. For the strip I used, these lights didn't quite fit all the way around the mirror. To give my build a nicer look, I cut the strip into 4 even strands of 15 LED lights, which are spaced evenly throughout the box.

I measured the inside rails to be 2 inches longer than my strips, so I cut strands of 2 1/4 in of wire and then stripped the ends. For each connection between LED strips, you will need 3 wires (Ground, Power, and Signal). The extra 1/4 in of wire gives some extra length to solder to the LED strips with.

Connect the strips by soldering. Once you have tested that the lights work and are satisfied with the strength of the connection, use some packing tape to cover and secure the connection.

Attach the strips to your rails by removing the plastic backing to expose their sticky side.

Drop the acrylic mirror in the back of the box. Be sure to also feed in the wire for the lights behind the mirror through the hole in the back of the box.

Carefully drop the rails in, making sure not to pull too hard on the connections between light strips.

Set the one-way mirror on top of the rails, and you're finished!