I've always had a fascination for LED lights, and, more specifically, light fixtures. For this project. I decided to build a sci-fi looking led lantern with infinity mirrors that has an almost reactor like aesthetic. The lantern itself is fully 3d printed, with the windows consisting of laser cut two way mirror acrylic. The crystal is a selenite tower which is bottom-lit by a ring of 8 addressable LEDs, which can be controlled over wifi through WLED (if this sounds a bit intimidating, don't worry, it's really quite simple to set up).

Supplies

As I'm from the Netherlands, some of the links here will be for Dutch suppliers, but most items should be available in other countries too through a quick google search. This project makes use of addressable LEDs, meaning that a series of LEDs will have a power in wire, a ground wire and a data in wire. Through the data wire, each LED can be given its own color and brightness, allowing you to control each LED individually.

For this project you'll need:

A 10cm tall selenite tower I got mine here
A ring of 8 5-volt addressable LED's with an outer diameter of 30mm I got mine here* - but this one looks like it should work too.
A 3D printer and 3D printer filament, I used a Creality Ender 3 and PLA filament
The 3D design files, which you can find here.
Six sheets of 75 x 136 x 3mm two-way mirror acrylic. I had mine cut to size here.
Twelve m3x15mm bolts
A microcontroller to control the LEDs, I used a wemos D1 mini, because it's really cheap, but most ESP32 or ESP8266 boards should do.
A 62 ohm resistor (or a resistor with a value somewhat close to 62, doesn't have to be exact).
A soldering iron and some solder
Hot glue

Optional:

Filler primer
Sandpaper
Spray paint

*The website says they are SK6812 led's, but in reality they are WS281x type LEDs. Any addressable LED ring should work as long as WLED can work with it. To find out if a type of addressable LED is supported, look here.

Step 1: Step 1: Printing

For this build you will need to print 1 base, 1 roof and 6 pillars. I'd recommend printing the base first, and printing it upside down with supports. Make sure to then use support blockers to prevent the channels for the acrylic, and the cavities for the pillars being filled in with supports. You really only want support for the middle section where the crystal goes.

My 3d printer had great difficulties printing the pillars standing up. so I printed them laying down, with support blockers preventing the screw holes from being filled in with supports. You do need supports to successfully print the "overhanging" channel. Using a small flathead screwdriver I was able to pry out these supports fairly easily.

Tip: The Thingiverse page includes a file for a very short pillar. Print this first to see if it fits in the base (perhaps with a few gentle hammer taps). Depending on your printer, you might need to downscale the pillars ever so slightly to get them to fit. Once you've dialed everything in, you can go ahead and print the six full sized pillars.

I printed everything at 0.2mm layer height.

Step 2: (optional) Sand and Paint All the Parts

If you want, you can leave the parts as they are straight from the printer. I sanded mine, hit them with a coat of filler primer, sanded them again, and then painted them black.

Step 3: Electronics

As mentioned before. This project makes use of addressable LEDs. In this instructable, I won't go into great detail on how to connect the LED ring to the microcontroller and how to install the WLED firmware onto the microcontroller, simply because there is excellent up-to-date documentation on the WLED website.

Connecting the LED's: https://kno.wled.ge/basics/getting-started/

TL;DR: Connect the +5V of the LED ring to the +5V pin on the microcontroller. Connect the ground wire from the LED ring to a ground pin on the microcontroller. Connect the data in wire from the LEDs to the 62 ohm resistor and connect the resistor to the data out pin on your microcontroller.

Different types of microcontrollers might use different pins for the data signal, so make sure to consult the WLED website to see which pin you need to connect the resistor to.

Installing the WLED firmware onto the wemos D1 and setting it up: https://kno.wled.ge/basics/install-binary/

If you're having issues installing WLED, install the wemos D1 driver on your computer and try again: https://www.wemos.cc/en/latest/ch340_driver.html

If all went well in this step, the LED ring should light up if you plug a (powered) usb cable into the wemos D1. Via the web interface, or through the WLED app for android or IOS you should now be able to control the LEDs.

Now is also a good time to see how the selenite crystal reacts to being lit from below, quite spectacular!

Step 4: Assembly!

Now the most fun part, putting it all together. I started out by mounting the wemos D1 and LED ring inside the base using some hot glue. MY LED ring fit fairly snugly into the gap in the base, so I just needed a little bit of hot glue to hold it in place. My selenite tower had some edges which prevented it from fitting in the cavity in the base, so I used some sandpaper to carefully sand down these edges on the bottom to make the selenite tower fit. I then used some silicone caulk to secure the crystal in place. Even though I glued down the crystal, I don't think any kind of glue sticks very well to it, so I wouldn't hold the lantern upside down, the crystal might come loose. Don't glue the crystal to the LEDs! Just glue it to the plastic base. In case you ever need to replace the LEDs, you can break loose the hot glue and just pull them out. In my case, the pillars needed a few gentle taps to get into the base. Do note, the pillars have two different ends. The closed end with the little block on it should go in the bottom base, so that the acrylic can be slid in from the top into the open channels. After doing one final test fit, I slid the acrylic sheets into place between the pillars. I saved the acrylic for last, as it can be scratched quite easily and I wanted to avoid damaging it accidentally whilst working on the lantern.

Finally, you can screw the roof down using the M3 bolts. If the pillars are already quite snug in the base, you don't really need to screw those in place too, but if they are still quite loose, make sure to screw at least a few down.

Step 5: Enjoy!

Everyone I've shown this lantern to has responded enthusiastically. The effect works best in a dimly-lit or dark room with the lantern at eye level. WLED also allows for many many ways of controlling it, so I'd highly encourage anyone who builds this to take a good look at what WLED can do.

If you have any questions or comments, please let me know!