Infinity mirror experiments

So today was another day of experiments for building an infinity mirror. We got a new kind of mirror-effect film. The brand is:

Next step was to replace the leds with a led strip. Not only does it produce much more light but with a remote control we are able to set the colour of the leds. The results are overwhelming.

 We bought it at the Hornbach diy store. It is not cheap. The price at the moment of this writing is 20 euro for a roll with a sheet of 67.5 x 150 cm. The real name is: SpiegelSichtschutzfolie. Meaning window foil that prevents looking inside. In real life it is used for preventing people looking inside your home while you maintain the possibillity to look outside.

The difference with the previous film is that that one was black and this one is silver. And the difference is enorm. Look at the pics below. We are using a self made tube of carton which encloses a round mirror at the bottom and a piece of glass on top that has been covered with this foil. The leds are from a christmas decoration. As you can see the depth illusion is enormous.

You can click on each individual image to enlarge it. And rest assured in real life it looks better as in these pictures.

Next steps:

- POC
Proof of concept. I am going to build a small infinity mirror based on the knowledge we have accumulated until now. Small meaning it will be a small square version which you can put on your desk. I will put it on the website as soon as possible.

Update: it is now on this webiste you can find it by clicking this link.

- experiments.
I am going to experiment with RGB leds, I have ordered neo-pixels (ws-2812 leds) which are individually adressable leds just like RGB leds.And I am going to try to control a led strip with an Arduino. Hey and how about charlieplexing the leds so I can have them doing noce tricks or chasing eachother..... For Charlieplexing look at the wesite. The outcome of these projects determins what the end-result will be made of. So watch this space.

Till then, have fun.

The Bible arrived

I have been looking for this a long time. I have been searching local bookstores and even at a large bookmarket for this but I never found it. So I ordered it a few days ago through the internet at Bol.com. And today it arrived.

 

This indeed is the Arduino bible. It is chockfull of information, schematics and example sketches (Arduino lingo for programs) that covers almost every aspect of working with the Arduino. Leds, Bluetooth, Wifi, Servo's, Time, LCD displays you name it and it is there.

This book not only covers the Arduino Uno but also other boards of the Arduino family like the Leonardo and the Mega. Many sketches and examples can also be used with a Digispark or stand alone Attiny.

To be frank I already downloaded a version of this book and read parts of it on my tablet, but nothing beats holding a 700 page book in your hands. I am very pleased with it. Worh every penny.

Have fun

Luc

Working in the Cloud

I have this great Andoid Phone. It is an Alcatel Pop C7. Fast processor, large screen and very reasonable camera. So it is a kind of workhorse for me. I use the camera a lot. Well it is obviously more convenient to carry your phone with you every day instead of your digital cam. But that is not the only application. I use Be ON Road as my daily navigation system. It is an off-line navigation system that uses Open Streetmap maps. So no wifi or data connection needed and the app is free. And now I am busy to write my own apps using app-inventor.

I use this phone for all kinds of things like photocamera (in fact most off my pics on this weblog are made with the phone), mp3 player, navigation system, barcode and qrcode scanner, calculator, for making notes, 3d video player (watch this space), winemaking tool (with my own app whatch this space inn the future). etc etc. However, I do not use it for what it was meant for: communucation. I almost never make calls with it, I do not SMS. I do not have accounts for facebook, twitter or whatsapp or any other social media. I simply do not do those kind of things.

For those of you who do not want a mobile phone consider this: you do not need to put a phone card in it. You can use it as a powerfull portable computer with bluetooth and wifi and you never have to tell anyone that you have a mobile phone....

But there is a small inconvenience. It is no longer possible to connect your android device with an USB-cable to your computer system without any extra apps. So I was looking for a good solution for this. And I found it by working in the cloud.

I went to the website of copy.com They offer for free 10Gig which you can use on any device (Linux, Android, Windows, Mac). So anything stored on the servers of copy.com is available on all your devices.

Install a small program on your windows machine and A new map will be made and put on your desktop:

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Now install the android app which you can find by clicking here and you are ready to share files between your phone, tablet and PC. So now when I take pictures with my Phone I cam immediately upload them to copy.com and they will be directly available (well after a few minutes that is) on my PC. Firstly that feels safe. I can now upload my photo's from any place in the world to the cloud and they are available at my home system. Ohh naturally you can make an open map to which you can grant other access so they can see your work from any other place in the world almost instantly.And secondly it is a lot less hassle. Here is the android screen:

The up-arrow is used to up-load your files to the copy.com server. If you put anything from your home desktop system in your copy folder in your windows system it will be almost instantly available to your android system.

This way I also upload test programs to my phone which I made with App-Inventor. Great for private testing.

And guess what. There are more cloud based storage facilities you can use. There is Google drive which offers you 15Gig and Dropbox. By using all three you will have about 30gig available.......

Have fun

Luc