Infinity Mirrors

[plaberge]

I've always liked infinity mirrors and this year, I decided to build three for my Halloween display - I may use them at Christmas but not sure where yet. These are pretty simple to build, lots of how-to videos on the web - all the parts (except for the plate glass) are shown in the picture below. The hardest thing is separating the mirror from the frame - mine were hot-glued - takes a bit patience but they eventually came apart. You could just buy mirror from the same place you get your glass or pexiglass and avoid that step altogether.  The carpet tape works pretty well to hold the strip but I did see some lift in one or two places so added some of the silicone brackets that come with the strips in each corner.

Those WS2812B 60 pixel/m strips definitely suck juice - without power injection, with all 100% white, the pixels start yellowing about 50 to 60 pixels in - there's a total of 174 pixels per mirror. I'm not injecting power on the video and it looks good but there was enough power draw that the voltage display on the F16-V2 went down below 4V (probably below 4.5V in reality) and eventually the OLED display on the F16-V2 went out, although the unit continued to work (may be unrelated.) In my display, I will be using an F4-B, with power injection.

Check out the video at https://vimeo.com/140149730

[Phrog30]

Very cool!

[Gilrock]

So just a single strip perpendicular to the mirror causes that effect?

[CaptainMurdoch]

I bought a shadow box picture frame the other day so I can make myself one of these.  It is 12x12 and the back plate is far enough from the back of the frame to give me enough room to mount a Pi model A+ to drive the pixels or I can just use one of the ESPixelStick's that should be sitting in my mailbox when I get home.  I showed the kids a few videos of these on the net and they should like it hanging in my office.

[Gilrock]

So I guess looking this up in other places it takes a piece of glass or plastic in front of the mirror to create the effect.

[JonB256]

Would it be better, worse or no difference if you used a flex strip without the silicon sleeve?

I've got a 5 meter spool sent to me by mistake by Ray (he didn't want it back) that is just the strip with a domed layer of soft plastic over it. Only 30pix/meter, though.

[plaberge]

So I guess looking this up in other places it takes a piece of glass or plastic in front of the mirror to create the effect.

Yes, the mirror is at the back and the front is a piece of clear glass with semi-transparent mirror film. I used something call Privacy Control from Home Depot which I applied to the glass using soapy water and a squeegee.

Here's how it works: 100% of the light bounces off the back mirror, 50% (or something like that) goes through the front piece of glass and the other 50% gets reflected back to the mirror, which reflects it back towards the front, and so on.  Each successive reflection looks further and further away because each time the light bounces between the mirrors it has to travel the sum of the distance of all previous reflections. Because some intensity is lost each time the light bounces, the reflections eventually fade into the distance.

[plaberge]

Would it be better, worse or no difference if you used a flex strip without the silicon sleeve?

I've got a 5 meter spool sent to me by mistake by Ray (he didn't want it back) that is just the strip with a domed layer of soft plastic over it. Only 30pix/meter, though.

I think most of the ones that I've look at on the web use bare strips. They seem to look a bit crisper. From a distance, however, it may not matter much. Given that I've made the boxes weatherproof, come to think of it, I probably could have used bare flex strips. I'm sure that 30pix/m will look great.

[danj]

Wow that is waay cool looking.   Thanks for the info.   Yet another thing to consider for a future year!!

[gerry]

That looks quite nice...I hate it when I see something like that that 'looks simple to build' when I think that I am almost done 

Where do you place these in your setup ie are they outside somewhere or inside your window ?