Robotic Reflections Infinity Mirror

Infinity mirrors use an internal mirror structure to bounce internal lighting back and forth, creating the appearance that you’re looking into infinity. Often these internal lights are addressable LEDs. While very neat, it's a fairly well known concept.

Robotic Reflections by I Want to Make, however, adds a Hoberman mechanism inside a hexagonal infinity mirror for greatly enhanced reflective interest. This device is held inside the mirror by a series of springs, and is driven by a stepper motor and linkage system. This gives it a very organic look as it moves, almost like a heartbeat.

Robotic Reflections' motor is handled by a Teensy board, along with a driver. After some early experimentation, it now does a full cycle in eight seconds, then rests for 15 seconds in order to avoid overheating. The lights are driven by an independent LED controller, which is turned down to lower the load on its 5VDC power supply.

While the Teensy should be more than capable of controlling the lights, keeping things independent should allow redundancy in case something were to to go awry. The device actually did overheat, causing the mechanical setup to break the first time it was shown. It had to be run lights-only after that. However, since the noted improvements it's “as cool as a cucumber.”

You can see Robotic Reflections on display in the video below, giving you a glimpse of how the weirdly-organic Hoberman mechanism moves. It’s also currently showing at the Emerging Artist Gallery at DTLA Art Night in Los Angeles, California.