3D Printed LED Infinity Cube Using FastLED, Arduino and ESP32

A while ago I spotted this tiny USB strip, and thought I should make it into an infinity cube. Thankfully I didn't know at the time what a pain it would be to make. Howeve, the end result is really nice - YouTube's compression algorithms really don't do it any favours!

Ultra-skinny LED tape from one of the following:

Amazon UK

Amazon US

00:00 - Intro
00:40 - Hardware build
04:10 - Electronics
05:07 - Software
07:05 - Outro

[DJ-Daz]

As a DJ, I approve this video 😀
As a DJ, I can't wait for the sound reactive video. 😀

[ChiefPoints]

Love the result, great job. I think this definitely moves to my "will build" list, and maybe move it up to full size LED tape for a larger cube. Thanks for sharing, take care!

[jamesledcube]

Awesome video and awesome result. Really well explained and demonstrated. Would definitely love to see you do a bigger one with ws2812’s, would give that a go for sure! Keep the great content coming, happy new year.

[jarchdm]

I'm currently working through your fast led videos. They are excellent. It will be some time before I try to tackle this kind of cube, but it looks really good. Thanks for sharing.

[basemh]

You really snd definitely deserve more subscribers
I wish you to hit 1M subscribers asap

[owens.]

There are 6 one way mirrors attached to all sides.

[Coltography]

Such a cool project, I've been trying to think of how to make a modular frame for an infinity cube like this and you've definitely got my brain going. Super well done and excellent explanation! Wouldn't want to deal with pixels that small, ever!! Haha

[H_Z_R-k]

This is the most badass cube, fricken awesome, and marketable!

[ben_r_]

Very well done for such a small build! You nailed it!

[NickyDone]

Just stumbled upon your channel. Finally a good series of videos on individually addressable rgb projects. Bravo mate.

[Preske]

I have been looking for ages for proper acrylic mirrors like this for a regular infinity mirror. I tried a couple of films but they were horrible or didn't work as needed. Great stuff Scott. Love your projects.

[kitemanmusic]

You have done a fantastic job with this!

[Xraller]

Wow! Very cool. Think I will have to give this a go.

[farzadbakhtiar]

Thanks for another great project and video. Your series on vu meters got me hooked and I’ve done a few sound reactive projects since then. I recently discovered the sound reactive fork of WLED and am playing with that as well. Would love to see a video on it from you.

[ScottMarley]

I've been informed by viewers that this is somehow being 'advertised' on Snapchat. I've now seen the ad and it is not my cube, and I have nothing to do with their site. Just FYI, if you order one from them, be prepared to lose your money. Reasons for suspicion: They don't appear on google at all, there are no reviews of their products other than their own site, it seems veeery cheap, the domain name was only registered 2 weeks ago and their email provider is yandex.ru, which is well known for its spam. EDIT: I've had confirmation now from several viewers that it's definitely a scam. Don't do it!

[TheMysticChaosifiers]

This was a great video! I’ve just finished making a Rhombic dodecahedron infinity mirror, and would thoroughly recommend it!!

[chrissavage]

OK, finally finished my homage to this ;)

As I mentioned, I made mine half-scale, which, with hindsight...was a stupid idea!!! Man, that was a fiddly little beggar to assemble. The LED strips I got had all the contacts on the underside, but they were only accessible every 5 LEDS, which didn't work, so all connections were made on the actual chips..which I will come to shortly.

I decided to use 24AWG (0.5mm) enameled copper wire to join it all up, but at this scale, that's like trying to solder a chunk of 1/2" copper pipe to the leg of an IC. I managed to complete the thing, testing at each new connection and got all 12 strips working as they should. I then did a test-fit of a section of 'mirror' and had to 'ease' one of the wire links out of the way....which broke the whole cube. I quickly discovered that due to the size and relative stiffness of the 24AWG wire, when bending it, I had ripped the contact off the top of the chip, thus ruining it. I messed with it trying to repair this, but eventually realised it would never work with this gauge of wire.

So, I identified and replaced the chips I had damaged - an experience in itself as I only had a few actual LEDs left over so had to de-solder good ones from the remnant of the strip, then swap out bad ones on the cube strips themselves, then re-built using 30AWG (0.25mm) wire which is flexible enough and small enough to work properly. To handle the reduced current capacity of the 30AWG I made a 'mesh' or ring out of the power connections which has ensured good brightness throughout the cube.

I used some 2mm wide double sided tape to stick the 'mirrors' in, which seems to have worked OK.

Overall, that was a seriously fiddly and testing exercise, next one will be

Again, many thanks to Scott for the inspiration, glad I persevered because it looks great....but I suspect a bigger one would look better.

And for proof, a short video of my completed cube:

[chrissavage]

I may come to regret this....but inspired by just how good this looks, I'm having a stab...but using 4mm wide LED strip with double the density (300LED/m), and only 12 LEDs per side to keep costs down (a 50cm strip has 150 LEDs, so 12 x 12 works from one 50cm section). I've tweaked the cube drawing in Fusion to suit a 40mm LED strip length so it'll be 'interesting' to see how it

LEDs and ESP arrived in the post today, code tweaked for 12 LEDs per segment and all good. Cube now

All credit to Scott for doing a parametric design by the way - only had to adjust a few values to re-size it. Only fiddle was with the 'pips' on the joints, but easily sorted.

The LEDs I bought have all 3 connections on the underside...so this should be 'fun' :)

If this proves too awkward fro my aging eyes, I may well scale it up and use more sensibly sized LEDs. I'm sure there is an optimum for LEDs/cm vs size of cube to get the best visual impact.

Anyhoo, thank you Scott, for sharing this awesome design.

I've never used an ESP32 before, only the odd Arduino project. Using Arduino IDE V2, no issues with making a very simple tweak to the code, although when uploading I had to reduce the "upload speed" to 115200 and the "Flash frequency" to 40MHz to get it to program.

I do have some modest experience with the 3D printing so that's all fine, although these are some small parts compared to my usual output.

[jouki]

Oh yeeea i would be so happy with some Sound visualization ideas😍😍

[GelatoNYC]

POV: you saw this on Snapchat and wanna know if it’s real