Before I started brainstorming ideas for my project, I went over some of the constraints I knew I would need to consider. Firstly, I wanted the project to be relatively within the materials I already had access for. This includes microcontrollers, electronics (like LEDs, Arduino Sound Spectrum Reader, Motors), as well as access to a 3D Printer. I also wanted to make sure that the technical side was something I’m already experienced with so I waste less time debugging and getting the project working and more time on the light art. This meant I wanted to find a project with plenty of resources for explaining similar parts of my project mechanically. Then since I’m more on the programming side of robotics, I would attempt to display my creativity programmatically.

For my initial ideas and concepts I had originally, I wanted a project that interacts with sound or music in some way, maybe by programming my own visualizer. However I wasn’t sure on what medium to use for making the visualizer. I brainstormed with different ideas with using LED boards or strips arranged in some configuration, or mounting a laser on two motors. I eventually went to Adafruit to gain further inspiration on what specific direction I wanted to take my project to, which is where I came across the NeoPixel Infinity Cube.

The general design of the Infinity Cube is fairly straightforward to build physically. It involves first 3D printing a cube frame. You then thread and hot glue an LED strip along the inside edges of the frame. Afterwards you just cut (I plan on using a laser cutter for this) the sides of the cube out of acrylic see-through mirrors and hot glue those into the frames of the cube. The idea behind the see-though mirrors is that they are semi-transparent, so they let through, for example 30% of light and reflect the rest back. This creates the effect where the LED’s inside the cube emit light that both bounce between the mirrors creating that ‘infinite tunnel’ effect, but the light is also allowed to partially pass through the mirror to allow viewers on the outside to actually witness the interesting light affects occurring on the inside.

From here, I had a much more concrete project design I wanted to aim for, which also sparked a lot more ideas on how to put my own spin on it. My first immediate connection was to relate the project with Dungeons and Dragons and dice, as this obviously falls in line with main subject of art I already enjoy doing (ie painting D&D miniatures). This opened the idea of using other dice shapes besides a cube, from a D4 to a D20 (D&D terminology for 20 sided die). If I wanted to really relate the project to D&D I could possibly create a unique rolling animation and number display through the use of the LEDs. Other, ideas I had involved using multiple dice, by either stacking them or nesting them. The nesting an infinity cube (or some other shape) within another infinity cube is the idea I’m currently most leaning towards as I could not find a single example on the internet of this done before and I’m genuinely curious on what that would actually look like. If I wanted to get more ambitious with this idea I thought it would be even more interesting if the inner cube and outer cube could be spinning in opposition directions. Finally, I definitely want to transform whatever end product I create into a custom music visualizer using an Arduino.