Dancing Mirror

For my Make Art Project, I was inspired by Elias Crespin, an artist I worked with last summer, who worked with kinetic art and decided to make motorized art. I made a “Dacing Mirror” An 8x8 panel mirror that moves!

Electronics :

1 x Arduino Nano

1 x Arduino PCA 16 channel board

16 x micro servo’s

1 x battery pack (4 AA)

1 x 5V 10A power

16 x Mirror Panels (2x2, had to be cut)

8 x jumper wires

Box :

3 x Plywood - 5in x 8in

1 x Foamboard - 8 x 8

3D Model :

Servo arms were 3D printed and designed on Tikercad.

The first step was to sodder the PCA board, and make sure I could run code on it while connected to the arduino board. Once I imported all the libraries necessary, I tired moving one motor at a time to make sure they worked!

The next task of the project was to make sure the PCA board was able to power ALL 16 of the motors. I attached the PCA board to the arduino nano with push wire pins, and then connected 4 servo motors to the PCA board. I realized that it was not moving, so I realized that it was a power problem – power was not reaching the servo’s for them to move.

To fix this problem, I bought a 5V 10A power supply, and used a cable from an air conditioner to connect it to a power outlet.

Once the 4 motors were powered, I added one by one to make sure it would power 16 at the same time. I tested them all one by one!

Next, I 3D printed all of the arm extensions after I designed theme on tinkercad. I used a caliper to measure the arms that came with the servo, and made an indent in the arm so that it would fit inside and be secured ontop of the motor.

After they were printed, I mounted everything on poster board, and began coding my patterns.

After that, I created a box around the poster board so that the hardware could sit neatly. I used a hot glue gun to put it together, and spray painted the exterior to white.

Lastly, I began to glye the mirrors to the arms. This was definitely trial and error becuase I did not leave enough space between the servos for the mirrors to move. So, I unfortunately had to cut the mirrors down by .25in in order for the them to sit on the arms successfully and move like they should.

After I successfully did this, I played around with patterns until I coded one that I liked!