In my last post I outlined my main project idea being to put some sort of spin on the Infinity Cube concept. Since then I’ve narrowed the directions down on where I can take the idea considering both some of the feedback I got as well as cost constraints I encountered in my selection of materials. Some of my top two suggestions were to either go with my nested infinity cube idea or make the infinity cube double as a functional die for when I play Dungeons and Dragons. I really liked both these ideas, and my decision between them mainly boiled down to the cost of materials for making two entire infinity cubes was simply too much than I was willing to spend to, so I’ve decided to go with the second option.

For planning the design of my infinity cube, I decided to base my calculations on making an infinity icosahedron (or in D&D terms: D20) as if I’m going to go the route of making a functional die for D&D it might as well be the most iconic die. This means that I will need to line the inside of 30 edges with LED strips in order to light up the whole object. In terms of resolution I personally wanted 10 LEDs per edge in order to have more control programmatically to create an interesting music visualizer using the icosahedron. This meant I’d need a total of 300 LEDs, however since LED strips come in 144 LEDs per 1 m, I ended up reducing the amount of LEDs per edge to 9 so that I could have enough LEDs with just two 1m strips. The required edge length and surface area can be seen in the figure bellow.

In terms of materials, as you can see in the table bellow I own or have on campus access to majority of the materials and tools that I need to functionally make the project. However I did need to buy the main two materials to physically make the infinity icosahedron: the LED strips and see-through acrylic mirror. Since I needed two 144p/1m LED strips to achieve the minimum icosahedron size I was aiming for, one infinity icosahedron ends up costing around $60 of this size. If I then also wanted to nest that icosahedron inside another, you can image that the second icosahedron would like be around $150 in material costs.

Item	Item Cost	Total Cost
LED Strips (2x)	$20	$40
Acrylic See-Through Mirror (12×18)	$20	$20
Aux Cord (2x)	$5	$10
Arduino		owned
Basic Electronics (wires, resistors, motors, etc.)		owned
Arduino Sound Board		owned
Tools for assembly (Soldiering Iron, 3D Printer, Laser Cutter)		own/access
Speaker		owned
5V Power Supply		undecided

Finally since my LED strips arrived before this last weekend, I was able to start prototyping some ideas for how to control the LEDs as if they were different sides of the icosahedron to visualize music. Using my Arduino Sound Board I can split incoming frequencies into 7 channels, so I started with a simple Hello World test where I just lit up a different LED depending on which of the 7 channels was the loudest. From there I worked my way up to having 7 “edges” corresponding to the 7 channels, each with 9 LEDs. Then for each channel I measure how loud it is, and depending on its loudness level I light a corresponding set of LEDs (I currently have 10 loudness levels). From here its fairly simple to either add more loudness levels, or change how the LEDs behave at each loudness level, and these decisions will come later once I have the infinity icosahedron assembled and I see for myself what the effects look like and adjust from there.

Planning ahead, my general timeline for when I want to complete parts of the project by is:

Goal	Date Completed
3D CAD Model Complete Start 3D Printing Parts Laser Cut Acrylic Sheet	Sept. 28
Finish 3D Printing Parts Assemble the infinity icosahedron	Oct. 2
Finish programming music visualizer Program some sort of D20 dice rolling animation	Oct. 5
Any last debugging / adjustments Final Demonstration	Oct. 12
Final Documentation	Oct. 16