instructables

"Easy" Infinity Cube

by thomasj152

Infinity cubes and icosahedrons are things that have
always caught my eye. They however always
seemed quite hard to make, because of the relative
complex frame. This infinity cube, however, has a
frame that is printed in one piece. Making the build a
lot stronger and easier than most other projects. The
size of the cube is chosen so only 1M of LED strip is
needed for the entire cube, keeping the cost low. I am
very happy with how this project turned out and hope
you like it as well!

https://youtu.be/QPtmzVDRJec

"Easy" Infinity Cube: Page 1

Step 1: Materials / Tools

Materials:
1meter ws2812b 144LED/m IP30 $8.69
microcontroller (Arduino) $2.58
6 plexiglass squares (91*91*3mm)
mirror film $2.19 (Product arrived in bad quality, I can't recommend ordering it on Ali)
wire (to connect LED strip pieces) $1.61
3D printed frame
soapy water (is this even a material?)
5V power supply $4.86 (10 A if you want all LEDs to be white, but 5A should be fine in most cases)

Tools:
Soldering iron
second glue
hot glue (optional)
wire strippers
small pliers ( to help with soldering in tight corners)
3d printer (or someone willing to help you out with printing the frame)

Step 2: The Frame

This is the most important part of this project. The
part is printed on one of its corners so there is less
difference in layer lines and because "theoretically"
no support is needed when printed in this orientation.
However, after this print failed once I decided to add
supports anyway. The supports are actually drawn in
the model because a slicer can not generate them
efficiently for a model like this ("v3 v11.stl" has
supports, v3 v12.stl" does not have supports).
Due to the orientation a 180*160*180 space is
needed to print an 114*114*114 cube. It took me 10h
to print and approximately 65g of filament is needed
for the model.

"Easy" Infinity Cube: Page 2

"Easy" Infinity Cube: Page 3
 https://www.instructables.com/ORIG/FPG/EKOS/K4E8ZRGE/FPGEKOSK4E8ZRGE.stl
… Download

Download
https://www.instructables.com/ORIG/F7B/977O/K4E8ZS4R/F7B977OK4E8ZS4R.stl
…

Step 3: LED Wiring

It is important to understand how the wires need to be
soldered before actually soldering them since there is
not a lot of space to work with. The drawing above
(which represents the cube) should give you an idea
of how everything is soldered.
5 Wires go through the hole into the cube. Two pairs
of 5V and GND, one to power the beginning of the
LED strip (on the bottom layer) and one to power the
end (on the top layer). This is not just powering the
strip on two ends, this is actually necessary to
eliminate the need for more complex solder joints.
The other wire that goes in is the Data line, this is the
line that sends data to all LEDs to specify the color of
them.
If you follow the green line you can see the order in
which the strip sections of 12 LEDs are connected
with each other (they are numbered in order on the
image). In the parts where the green line runs next to
a piece of LED strip, it means that it is running
underneath the strip (The frame has space for these
wires).
In the sketch, you can see that there are three parts,
the center square, the outside square, and the middle
4 pieces that are in between the two squares. The
middle 4 pieces get their 5V from the outside square
and their GND from the center square.
Note that the wires that power the outside square
come in on the bottom layer and go through the frame
(behind a part of the LED strip) to the top layer.

"Easy" Infinity Cube: Page 4

Step 4: Soldering Step 1

"Easy" Infinity Cube: Page 5

I am going to divide this section into sub-steps to
explain everything better. I numbered the parts of the
LED strip in the image above to explain everything
better.
This is how I did this, if you have a better way, just
use your own.
Make sure to pay attention to the direction of the
LED strip pieces! Placing one piece incorrect can
give you a lot of trouble.
Step 1: Since we need sections of 12 LEDs you
Step 5: Soldering Step 2
"Easy" Infinity Cube: Page 6
should start by cutting the LED strip in 12 pieces of
12 LEDs each. Next, connect 3 wires to part 1, make
sure to connect them on the Din side. Add 2 more
wires to connect to the V5 and GND on part 12 to the
Dout side, the wires for this side need to be at least
12cm longer since they need to run through the
frame, the wires do not need to be soldered to part 12
yet. Run all the 5 wires that connect these pieces
through the hole. Then remove the cover of the sticky
tape and stick part 1 to the frame, don't worry, the
tape does not stick very well, the parts will later be
attached with glue.
Make sure to pay attention to the direction of the
LED strip pieces! Placing one piece incorrect can
give you a lot of trouble.
Step 2: Now parts 2-3 will be added, the same
process can be repeated for 4,5 and 6,7. First, a wire
needs to be soldered to the Din of part 3, this wire
needs to be 15 cm or longer and is the one that goes
to the Dout of part 2 (blue line in image). This wire will
be trimmed down later. After soldering the wire
remove the sticky tape cover of this part and place it
down.
Next, connect the Dout op part 1 with the Din of part
2, to do this, you might need to pull part 1 a bit of the
frame. this needs to be a very short wire with a piece
of insulation in the middle. Remove the tape from part
2 and place it in its position, make sure the blue wire
runs behind it.
Now trim the wire connected to the Din of part 3 and
solder it to the Dout of part 2. To solder this, it is very
"Easy" Infinity Cube: Page 7
likely that you have to remove part 2 from the frame
again to get some space. This is a very tight corner
and the wire that is underneath part 2 will need to
make a sharp 180-degree turn to connect to the Dout
of part 2 (this can be seen in image 4).
Now connect the V5 of part 1 and part 3, a short wire
might be needed to do this.
Finally, take a small piece of wire to connect the GND
of parts 1,2 and 3 with each other. If the 5V pad of
part 2 is in the way, you can just cut the corner of that
part of diagonally to remove the solder pad.
Check for shorts if you think you might have made a
mistake.
Now repeat for part 4,5 and 6,7 :)
Step 6: Soldering Step 3

Make sure to pay attention to the direction of the wires run nicely trough the gutter at the place of part 8
LED strip pieces! Placing one piece incorrect can (which is not placed yet). You can pull the wires a bit
give you a lot of trouble. more trough the hole to make them fit better. Next
connect the Din of part 8 to the Dout of part 7, just as
step 3: Right now part 1 to 7 should be placed down, in the previous step. then connect the GND of part 7
make sure to triple check everything because you can with part 8.
not easily test it because parts 2,4 and 6 do not have
5V yet. Connect the 5V and GND wires that run (In the image above I have not yet added part 12, I
through the hole to part 12. Remove the sticky tape did add it but do not have an image of it.)
cover from part 12 and place it down. make sure the

"Easy" Infinity Cube: Page 8

Step 7: Soldering Step 4

Make sure to pay attention to the direction of the LED strip pieces! Placing one piece incorrect can give
you a lot of trouble.

Step 4: You are almost done, only part 9,10 and 11 need to be placed down. Soldering these should be straight
forward, just make sure to solder the Dout of one piece to the Din of the next first, since it is difficult to access
afterward. Do not forget the connect the 5V of this layer with the 5V of part 2,4,6 and 8.

To test if all the LEDs work, I used the following code. It will go through all LEDs one by one. If something does not
work, you can use a multimeter to figure out what is wrong.

"Easy" Infinity Cube: Page 9

 <p>#include <br>#define LED_PIN 7
#define NUM_LEDS 144
CRGB leds[NUM_LEDS];
int counter;
void setup() {
FastLED.addLeds(leds, NUM_LEDS);
counter=0;

}
void loop() {
counter=(counter+1)%144;
leds[counter] = CRGB(255, 0, 0);
FastLED.show();
delay(20);
leds[counter] = CRGB(0, 0, 0);
}</p>

Since only one LED is powered at a time, this code can be powered through the Arduino. This means the external
power supply is not needed to run this code, you can just connect the 5V and GND of the strip to the Arduino.

Step 8: Gluing the LEDs to the Frame

As mentioned before, the sticky tape on the strip itself does not stick well to PLA. That is why I lifted all the LED
strip pieces a bit and put some second glue underneath them and pressed them down afterward.

Be careful not to spill this glue. Besides sticking your hands together It will leave stains on the frame.

"Easy" Infinity Cube: Page 10

Step 9: Cutting Acrylic Squares (If You Did Not Have Them Cut)

Instead of cutting the acrylic in squares of 91mm, I edges, but there is room for a few mm error so it does
used a ruler and a knife to make lines in the acrylic at not matter that much.
points where I wanted to break it. After making a line
in the acrylic with the knife, I placed the line on the (I already applied film to two squares in the image)
edge of a table to break the piece on the line. This is
not super accurate and might result in a bit uneven

"Easy" Infinity Cube: Page 11

Step 10: Applying Mirror Film

Here is a link to someone explaining how to do this, to summarize it:

"Easy" Infinity Cube: Page 12
 1. Clean acrylic, remove fibers or dust
2. Apply soapy water to acrylic
3. remove plastic from film
4. place the film on the acrylic
5. remove bubbles and soap from the center out with a plastic card
6. trim edges

Make sure to remove all particles before applying film, this makes a significant difference in how well it
looks.

Step 11: Placing Mirrors in Frame

"Easy" Infinity Cube: Page 13

Before placing any mirrors in the frame make sure the take care of the aligning. I attached the mirrors with
mirror side is cleaned well, this side will be placed some second glue to the frame (Hot glue might be
inwards and can not be cleaned afterward. better for this, it does not stain the PLA). The mirror
side facing inwards because that is the most fragile
I placed the mirrors in opposing pairs just to check side and this way light does not have to travel through
that they were perfectly pacing the same way. This is a layer of acrylic before being reflected again.
actually very easy to achieve since the frame should

Step 12: Electronics

"Easy" Infinity Cube: Page 14

I started with cleaning up the wires that were coming
out of the cube, this just makes everything look a bit
neater in my opinion. Since this project is just an
Arduino with an LED strip everything is quite simple.
5V from the power supply should be connected to the
5V of the cube and to the 5V of the Arduino. The
GND from the power supply needs to be connected to
the GND of the cube and to the GND of the Arduino.
Make sure you get the polarity right, check this with a
multimeter if necessary before powering it on,
otherwise you could fry your Arduino. To avoid this
you could also power the Arduino trough the power
connector, but you will need an extra connector to do
this. Now the only thing left to do is to connect the Din
of the cube to a pin on the Arduino, I ended up using
pin 5, but this does not really matter. Simple right?!
note: the third image is just some scheme I found
online, the resistor in there is not needed. You could
decide to include it though,

Step 13: Code :)

The code I used up til now was quite simple, I just took some code from the fast LED example library and changed
a few numbers to run on this cube (the original code I used can be found here). Before connecting the Arduino to
your PC using the USB port, make sure to unplug the 5V connection between the power supply and the Arduino.

I ended up writing code that has multiple animations, some of them can be seen in the video above.:

Dont copy paste from this, it wont run due to the way instructables pastes code

<p>#include <br>#define LED_PIN 5

#define NUM_LEDS 144
CRGB leds[NUM_LEDS];</p><p>void setup() {
FastLED.addLeds(leds, NUM_LEDS);
fill_solid(leds, NUM_LEDS, CRGB(0,0,0)); // fill all black
"Easy" Infinity Cube: Page 15
 fill_solid(leds, NUM_LEDS, CRGB(0,0,0)); // fill all black
FastLED.show();
}
void loop() {
onesnake(10000);
fill_solid(leds, NUM_LEDS, CRGB(0,0,0));
fadeFromCenter(10000);
fill_solid(leds, NUM_LEDS, CRGB(0,0,0));
//rainbow(5000);
fill_solid(leds, NUM_LEDS, CRGB(0,0,0));
sparkles(10000);
fill_solid(leds, NUM_LEDS, CRGB(0,0,0));
//loopThroughColors(5000);
fill_solid(leds, NUM_LEDS, CRGB(0,0,0));
}
void onesnake( int duration){
unsigned long startTime;
startTime=millis();
int location=1;
int nextpath =1;
int corners[8][3] = {{-7,8,1},{-1,2,3},{-3,4,5},{-5,6,7},{-8,-12,9},{-2,-9,10},{-4,-10,11},{-6,-11,12}};
int ledsInSnake[48];
int color=0;
for (int i=0;i<48;i++){
ledsInSnake[i]=0;
}
while(startTime+duration>millis()){
if (location>0){
for(int i=0;i<12;i++){
color=(color+5)%2550;
leds[ledsInSnake[0]]=CHSV(255, 255, 0);
for(int j = 0; j < 48; j++){
if (j!=0){
leds[ledsInSnake[j]]=CHSV(color/10,255, (j*255)/48);
ledsInSnake[j-1]=ledsInSnake[j];
}
}
ledsInSnake[47]=(location-1)*12+i;
leds[ledsInSnake[47]]=CHSV(color/10,255, 255);
FastLED.show();
delay(20);
}
}
if (location<0){
for(int i=0;i<12;i++){
color=(color+5)%2550;
leds[ledsInSnake[0]]=CHSV(255, 255, 0);
for(int j = 0; j < 48; j++){
if (j!=0){
leds[ledsInSnake[j]]=CHSV(color/10,255, (j*255)/48);
ledsInSnake[j-1]=ledsInSnake[j];
}
}
ledsInSnake[47]=(location+1)*-12+11-i;
leds[ledsInSnake[47]]=CHSV(color/10,255, 255);
FastLED.show();
delay(20);
}
}
nextpath=random(0,2);
for (int i=0; i<8;i++){//differen 8
if (corners[i][0]==-location || corners[i][1]==-location || corners[i][2]==-location){
if (corners[i][nextpath]!=-location){
location=corners[i][nextpath];
}else{
location=corners[i][nextpath+1];
}
break;
}
}</p><p> FastLED.show();
delay(20);
}
}
void fadeFromCenter( int duration){
unsigned long startTime;
startTime=millis();

"Easy" Infinity Cube: Page 16

 int counter = 0;
while(startTime+duration>millis()){
counter=(counter+1)%255;
for (int i=0;i<12;i++){
for (int j=0;j<6;j++){
leds[i*12+j]=CHSV((counter+j*15)%255,255,255);
leds[i*12+11-j]=CHSV((counter+j*15)%255,255,255);
}
}
FastLED.show();
delay(20);
}
}
void loopThroughColors(int duration){
unsigned long startTime;
startTime=millis();
int counter = 0;
while(startTime+duration>millis()){
counter=(counter+1)%255;
for ( int i=0;i</p><p>void rainbow(int duration){
unsigned long startTime;
startTime=millis();
int counter = 0;
while(startTime+duration>millis()){
counter=(counter+1)%255;
for(int i = 0; i < NUM_LEDS; i++){
leds[i]=CHSV((i*5+counter)%255, 255, 255);
}
FastLED.show();
delay(20);
}
}
void sparkles(int duration){
unsigned long startTime;
startTime=millis();
int LENGTH = 40;
int blink[LENGTH];
int color =0;
for (int i=0;imillis()){
color=(color+5)%2550;
leds[blink[0]]=CHSV(255, 255, 0);
for(int i = 0; i < LENGTH; i++){
if (i!=0){
leds[blink[i]]=CHSV(color/10,255, (i*255)/LENGTH);
blink[i-1]=blink[i];
}
}
blink[LENGTH-1]=random(0,NUM_LEDS);
FastLED.show();
delay(50);
}
}</p>

https://youtu.be/QPtmzVDRJec

Download
https://www.instructables.com/ORIG/FC4/R08X/K54G067G/FC4R08XK54G067G.ino
…

Step 14: Enjoy Your Awesome Infinity Cube!!

I hope you liked this instructable. If so, please vote for me in the contest and give me some feedback, I'd like to
hear your ideas for projects or improvements on this build. Thanks for reading!

"Easy" Infinity Cube: Page 17

Wow! This is awesome, I really love the effect. The only thing I can think that would make it any
better would be some way to mount it on a corner so that I could spin, but really that would just be
the icing on the cake. This would be an awesome desk display any way, and the application of a
3D infinity mirror is extremely well presented. Great job all around.
There are only three wires going to the Cube, 5v, ground and data.
A small stereo jack socket could be mounted in the corner of the cube and a plug mounted on the
base.
The jack plug would work as a (Possibly terrible) comutator and allow the cube to be rotated.
I would protect the power in the cube with diode.
I would put something in place to prevent the cube being unplugged to stop the power and data
lines being reversed as the plug slides past the contacts on the jack socket.
That could lead to "Infinity Smoke"
:-)

Yes, that's a great technique for inexpensive slip-rings. I won a High School science fair in the 80's
with a working model of an amusement ride (Scrambler) using those plug/jacks for powering lights
as it rotated. Although initially tight, RCA plug/sockets work well for 2-conductor applications.

My suggestion, however, is to use the rule "if it provides power, use female, if it requires power,
use male" (Think of wall outlets and appliance plugs, and the sort of drama resulting from live
prongs if it was the opposite was true).

"Easy" Infinity Cube: Page 18

Basically, put the plug on the cube and use the receptacle in the base, it will prevent shorting the
power supply as the three plug rings pass over the metal parts of the socket as it's inserted.

Oh... another method for off-the-shelf slip-rings I've used are those phone cord "untanglers". They
have 4-contacts in a swivel capsule with a telephone-handset plug on one end and the female
socket on the other. Easy to replace if needed.

The current-carrying ability must be considered with these ideas, but the 3-ring plug/socket is
probably the best choice here. There are some nice, high-current slip-ring capsules available from
eBay under $20 - for future reference.
Well very nice project that i'm going to have to do soon :) I think it would be easy to make the frame
with wood and make a base for it to sit on a corner (but not spin :( ) Thanks for sharing a great
idea... Btw , does the leds get very hot inside a closed cube ?
Nice build, the compact size is a plus. Not sure I would list "3D printed frame" in materials as you
can't go and buy it off the shelf. Should have 3D printer listed in tools instead.
Your right, I listed it also material, because I used to go to maker spaces or print services to get
stuff peinted before I had my own printer, I'll add it to the tool list.
Wow....!!!

"Easy" Infinity Cube: Page 19