This video will guide you through assembling your Infinity Kit.

Transcript

G'day, today we're going to assemble a desktop infinity mirror kit, on the bench in front of me I've got a few tools that you're going to need to assemble it we've got a screwdriver, a sharp blade, I've got a hobby knife here but a Stanley knife will work fine, just some pliers to bend some wires, some side cutters for cutting wires, a ruler to measure wire lengths and just like a credit card, driver's license, here I've got a transit card for applying a reflective film to a piece of acrylic. Let's get started.

During the Assembly of the kit you're gonna have to peel off a lot of paper or plastic off pieces of acrylic so we've included this little paper peeling piece of acrylic that just has a rounded edge that you can use to lift the edge on any pieces of acrylics that you need to peel and that'll just make things a bit easier so I've just shown you that with a sample.

We're going to start from the front of the mirror and work backward. So to start with I have a shape of clear acrylic here and I've already peeled off the paper layer on the back. I've taken four of the long screws and inserted them through the acrylic and just tape them down to hold them in place for the rest of the build.

So this front piece of Acrylic with the four screws is going to serve as a jig for assembling the rest of the kit. We're going to put it aside now because we're going to assemble the front mirror so for that we'll need the mirror fill this is a semi-reflective or a semi-transparent mirror. The second piece of clear acrylic that came with the kit I've already peeled one layer of paper off this one leaving the back layer on so I'm going to scratch it on the table and I have here a glass of just tap water with the barest drop of dishwashing detergent in it so that's what we're going to use to help flow out the film.

I'm just going to dip my fingers in and spatter it generously onto that panel, but if you have a spray bottle hanging around you can absolutely use that that might make life a little bit easier if doesn't matter.

We now need to wet the surface of the acrylic this is the peeled surface the paper that is remember on the back we need to wet this surface with the soapy water, so I'm just going to flick that water on just to get it generously wet for the application of the film.

The film has a backing on it so we need to remove that, I've got a little a little loose end here so I can peel it from there, but if you have trouble with it you can take two types of masking tape and apply one to either side and then use those tabs to help pull the film apart, it might take a few goes but it does work in the end. But myself I have that little loose end to peel, so I can peel that off and that's, of course, the adhesive side. So I'm going to now remove my paper towel so I don't stick my film to it and just apply that from I'll go one edge to the other so I need my scraping card for this next bit and I'll lay it across my piece of acrylic.Then just gently guide it along with scraper.

So I'm just gently moving my my transit card got my keycard across the surface as I go.

This film is quite tough so, you don't you don't have to be too afraid of tearing it obviously don't don't scrape as hard as you can with the corner of a sharp object but just um don't don't be afraid to use a little bit of pressure just to help those beads of water come through. Alright, I'm pretty happy with that. You might still have some defects left over underneath the underneath the film I wouldn't worry about it too much because once the mirror is lit they're pretty much invisible. So from here I just need to trim the excess off the mirror. So I I start part way through or part way along an edge and just kind of bring my knife into the edge of the acrylic and then carefully along the edge making sure making absolutely sure that you don't accidentally right up onto the surface of the mirror that would be that will be quite bad but then once you once you have that you can then don't cut towards yourself you can then complete that edge. So this is super easy with a hobby or exacto knife and just and you can even you can even use it to shave off just that that little end that we're still hanging there and you can see it comes off beautifully you. What we need to do next is cut a small cross hole in each of the four holes and this will allow the screw to pass through the film.

Okay, I just dry that off.

Now wipe down all the exposed acrylic see don't trap any fingerprints and we'll place the now mirror film acrylic film side down onto the front panel so that the film is essentially sandwiched between these two pieces of clear acrylic.

Next we'll assemble the mirror box so we need to find the four pieces that are labeled "a" and peel the protective coating of birds you'll notice we have on the same side that's labeled with the a we have this little corner cut out so as we place them just make sure that the labels facing up and that the cutter is in the same corner for every layer, this creates a little channel down one corner for our wires later on. There you have it.

Now that we've got the mirror box we're going to prepare the LEDs to go into it so I'll put that aside for now and take out my LED strip. There should be exactly 44 LEDs on this strip so just count them up to make sure and we want to work with this end of the strip here the end that has an arrow pointing into it that's where we're going to inject our power and data signals.

First measure 170 millimeters of each red black and white wire.

And strip about five millimeters off the end of each wire so very gently with my side covers if you don't have live strippers I'll just very gently squeeze a depression into the into the insulation all the way around making sure not to cut through. So once that insulation is cut I can remove it without cutting the copper core of the wire.

So you can see I'm just holding my LED strip down just with the weight of some pliers and I'm going to solder the ground connection first. So using the black I'll just get that roughly into position, take my role of solder. Tip the end. That's not quite soldered properly just yet it's just being held in position so that I can solder the other two wires and do a second pass, it's because I don't have a pair of helping hands at the moment so I'm just going to do this all very low-tech. Turn that and again come in hit the wire and the pad

And once that's done just fold the wires neatly to the right, making sure that you don't have any connections touching each other at the top here

And now on the other end of the LED strip if the one without the wires we just need to cut off this last piece of strip here, so just between the LED and a small capacitor that's on the strip. I'm just going to cut in there with my side cutters making sure not to stress the LED and then I need to come in from the other end as well. That way I'm not putting any pressure on my LED. So now I've got a nice a nice flush cut that's flush with the edge of that LED.

Taking the supplied double-sided tape I'm going to apply that around the perimeter of my box and in fact I'll do it in four lengths I think that is going to be the most manageable the corners aren't super important. So cutting four lengths and I can just apply that to the inside wall. You find it easy to hold the tape by the ends and then press the center out and then run the end zone, because the tape doesn't have to be perfectly centered just make sure that all your wall pieces are stacked down properly that you have no gaps where it's lifting up before you start this.

And the last piece, just make sure I'm not running off the edge there, yep. So just make sure the tape doesn't fall into that little trough cut out in the corner. Perfect now I can peel the backing off each side of the tape.

But the point of that knife is very effective it's just lifting that layer of backing off. Beautiful just to make this if it is you I'm going to rotate it so the pocket is in the top right because that's where the wires are going to come out, we have folded them over to the right so that they can protrude through that little tunnel that's been cut out so if I coil this stripper.

Okay, so I'll seat the LEDs the ID strip against the mirror surface and then press those wires right into that pocket and just adhere that first part. So you can see the wires are now sticking up and out through that pocket and the edge of the soldered LED strip is about level with the line projected by this edge of the mirror so it's not crossing too far into the pocket and it's not adhered too far away from the pocket. It's just about in line with this rule here and now I can just walk the LED strip all the way along that edge, adhering it the whole way, until I get to the corner. Now when you get to the corner be very careful here.

As you walk the LED strip, in you can press that corner all the way in and you should see this the thin white line that's in between LEDs. There should be that thin white line should be just about centered with the radius of the corner and that's how you know that you've got a good position so once you're happy with that you can make sure that that whole side is tacked down nicely and continue with the next side. So bring the mirror over and before we let the LED strip hit that tape we want to just make sure that that corner is positioned nice and snug and then we can keep walking the LED strip around.

So as we complete that run. Beautiful so that has nice nicely closed that loop just about and we have an adhered end of the with wires coming out that tunnel.

Before we close up the LED box we're just going to wipe off any fingerprints that we may have left behind on the acrylic just making sure to not to pull at the edges of the LEDs as you go if you do lift an LED it's okay this is pretty high tack tape so you can just squeeze it back down with your fingers and keep wiping up your fingerprints. All right now it's time to mask the mirror a momentous occasion the mirror is the piece with this great backing and a white paper front or you may have a clear paper front but you'll note a small rectangular cutout in one corner that's for routing these wires through, so it does matter which way this goes on peel off the paper layer and try not to get any fingerprints on the mirror from here. That way we won't have to do any more wiping after we attempt closing the box.

Before we get too much dust on I'll just gently feed these wires through the rectangular hole in the mirror and then flip the mirror around and help feed those wires through that little ratting hole. Line it up with the screws fantastic we've closed up the mirror it's now in a nice complete mirror box stayed fantastic no more fingerprints.

Feel the plastic off the panel labeled B, that's the one with this trough cut in it that's for ratting our wise and will note that next.

Just work those wires into the trough and mount it onto the screws. Perfect.

Just going to strip the ends of these wires now while they're still nice and free so just like before about five millimeters of wire or five millimeters of insulation off each piece of wire is sufficient.

And then bends those down and around through that routing trough. Now to help us out with closing the mirror it can be helpful to tape the wires down just so they don't come out of the trough and want to sit in between layers so I'm just going to use some regular sticky tape for that.

That'll just stop those wires from sneaking out.

Take four of the nuts supply for this project and insert them into the four hexagonal holes that are in the B panel. Whoops, if you get them in funny if they shouldn't they should come out quite easily but you can always remove the panel and push them out with a pencil or pen.

Then peel and mount the C panel to close up that cable routing tunnel through here and we have two more hexagonal holes, so make sure you don't forget to insert another two nuts into those.

Next we'll build the control box so take the D panel and feed the wires through the complex hole that's cut into the top of that and we'll just rest it on top and then finally the last black panel which is unlabeled but it has this small feature up here where you can just insert the wires and see you know using the right one, just rest that on top as well. Take four of the shorter screws and we're going to feed them into the four corners to secure them with the four nuts that we mounted in the I think of the B panel. So I'll just rest those through to make sure there they are lining up these two small panels and then we can locate those into the appropriate holes.

And tighten gently with a Phillips head screwdriver. There's no need to over tighten these screws just finger tight is really fine.

Now we'll solder the potentiometer to the photon. So what we first need is 70 millimeters of each red and black wire and 40 millimeters of white.

Again strip a short amount of insulation off the end of each piece of wire and we'll begin by soldering the black wire to the left terminal of the potentiometer. I try to do this so you can see in the camera. So again in tinning my tip to help transfer that heat and then white to the center, red is going to go to the right-hand most terminal. That was better should have done that the first time. Okay.

So from left to right we have a long black a short white and a long red. Now we're going to take the red wire and solder it to the 3v3 pin, which is up here in the top right of the photon. Tin the cable. Okay, that's good, and now we'll take the back lead and solder it to the ground or GND pin, which is just next to this reset button. So on sigh and set that through you'll see that pocking through.

Now the photon is going to be sitting here and the plot is going to be sitting here. So we need to make sure these wires are bent to accommodate that little routing trough, although they can pass under it quite easily. So I'll just bend them into an into the rough shape we want and finally, the white wire needs to go to this A0 pin in the in the bottom left corner of the photon. So we can bring that over now.

The whole thing is kind of self-supporting now, which makes it much easier to solder. Beautiful. With that completely now ready to solder the LED strip wires to the photon as well. So taking the red wire we're going to solder it to the top left connection on the photon which is labeled V N or VIN

Next the LED strips black wire, goes to the ground pin that's right next to VN.

And finally, the white wire is going to go to d0 which is the very bottom most the bottom rightmost pin on the photon everything just about holds itself up now which is nice and convenient. And that completes all the soldering we need to do. Before we finish the assembly we're in a state where we can see if our mirror is going to work so I've just made sure that at least two of these nuts in the corners are on to stop the mirror falling apart while I pick it up and turn the knob all the way to the left towards that the side with the black solid connection making sure that we don't have anything shorted across our solder joins like no no solder bridges or anything like that and also make sure that no connections are shorted against anything metal like the case of the pot or the screws on the mirror itself. I'm going to take my plugged in power lead and plug it into the photon I should immediately get a little power lamp showing so that that's all well and good for now we've got a power to Photon and if we look to the front we don't have any animations yet but I'm you can't really see it because it's behind the mirror but I'm going to turn that pot just a little bit to the right as if I'm turning up the volume and we can see we've started showing our first node, of course, I've still got the paper on this side because I don't want my clear front panel to become scratched during assembly. But it's at least showing that we have a working infinity mirror kit and I can just turn that knob to the see the remaining modes.

All that's left to do now is make sure we've got all our four corner screws in and we're just going to seed this photon down into its little bed here. So just making sure that those wires don't get caught underneath it and stop it from going in we can just gently massage and press that down. There we go and that should slot very snugly into its little holder. Just make sure you don't get any wires sitting between the photon and these tabs that hold it in place, so you need to make sure that those wires aren't too close and there we go. Take the I forgot to take the nut and the washer off the pot so I'll do that now otherwise I can't get the front screen on and this is where that peeling tool can come in handy just to just to help scrape the little pieces of paper that might remain behind within the text.

Give it a wipe down to make sure we don't have any too many fingerprints left behind it's still a few bits of paper and the text. Obviously don't press too hard the UM the acrylic shouldn't scratch the acrylic but unless you make it to by pressing too hard.

Just holding the photon in place we can feed the panel we'll feed the pot shaft through that panel and then make sure everything sits nicely and then run in the final two screws of the bill. Of course, making sure not to over-tighten.

And there's a small hole just beneath the potentially I'm gonna shaft that's intended for a little notch on the potentiometer to lock into it, so that it doesn't rotate around so just make sure that's located and then you can finally run on the potentiometer nut there we go that was the notch engaging with the whole. Finger tight it's fine for that and now when you turn the pot to either end the whole potentiometer won't want to rotate because it's locked into that hole

And now to finish everything off. We can turn the pot all the way at the left plug our photon and then with this little hook here we have a bit of a strain relief for our cable. Just so if it gets tugged on it doesn't damage the photon. So we can just slip that through the little hook there and that gives you a little bit of strainer relief. Flip it over, dial the novel up a little bit and for the moment we have all been waiting for we can peel off the front protective layer and they have it. Isn't my awesome effect. Now your infinity mirror will stand straight up on your desk if you like but we've also included a couple of clear feet that you can set it on kind of like a picture frame, so that it tilts back a bit so if we roll it over to its bottom side you'll see a couple of holes just in that second-to-last to rear panel so you can gently slop those feet into those holes and that will just change the way that our infinity mirror presents

So there you have it your very own tunnel of light tearing through space. We hope you enjoyed assembling your desktop infinity mirror if you have any questions or comments about something you'd like cleared up for the assembly procedure absolutely let us know in the comments section, otherwise enjoy.

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