Cyber Mirror

Concept

In a future world, everything is turning into ones and zeros, stored digitally and out of sight. Social media is taking over, making human interaction feel less real. Imagine a world where people live alone in their own apartment buildings and never meet face-to-face. This project, designed for public spaces, brings back the lost feeling of connecting with others. It uses digital prints to link two people together, but the connection is brief and distant, like a memory you can’t quite hold onto.

The project is a cyber mirror which scans the biometrics of the interactor based on their heart rate, creating a QR code that is unique to them. This mechanism allows the mirror to record the last person who has interacted with it, retaining the digital profile until the next person interacts with the cyber mirror.

When an individual interacts with the cyber mirror, they would first encounter someone else’s QR code. By looking at someone else’s unique digital feature, the individual engages in a minimal interaction where the real person of the QR code is not present. This evokes the simultaneous feeling of connectedness and distance between two people. The individual can then press the button to record their own QR code, where the mirror would scan them based on their heart rate. After the QR code is generated, the previous one will be overwritten by the new one, furthering the theme of two people that are not present at the same space at the same time.

2. Process

I first started out by testing that the LED matrix works and can be powered by my power supply, just running simple code I already found in an online tutorial.

I then soldered the pulse sensors from Amazon as they came unconnected *SIGH*

Then I proceeded to test the pulse sensor with a simple LED to make sure it works on its own

While I was at the craft lab I also unsoldered the GND and 5V on the LED matrix to replace with longer wires that are thicker and would fit into the power supply connector better

I then ran a test with the pulse sensor and the matrix to make sure they work together, running a simple heart animation whenever a pulse is detected

After making sure the pulse sensor and the LED matrix work together, I added the buttons

In order to fit the buttons seamlessly into the side of the mirror, I used special jumper wires that lay flat on the breadboard. I also changed the buttons to bigger and colorful versions.

The mirror itself is made out of a clear sheet of acrylic with a one way window film attached to the back. This would allow the lights on the matrix to show through without the user seeing behind the mirror itself. Adding a sheet of paper in between helped with visibility as well as diffusing the lights a little bit.

Here I wired the second matrix to be the full length of the mirror, however the Arduino did not have enough memory to actually execute both of the matrices so I had to remove it and stick to only using one. This ended up working better visually because it fits with the QR code idea.