![magic mirror beauty and the beast magic mirror beauty and the beast](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a7/c0/81/a7c081c85176cfd08d59b5514f9c5a60.jpg)
Luckily last year's musical selection was "The Wizard of Oz" and I had sewn the Tin Man costume so silver fabric scraps were available for the center of the mirror.
![magic mirror beauty and the beast magic mirror beauty and the beast](https://www.picclickimg.com/d/l400/pict/132835040387_/Vintage-Disney-Beauty-and-the-Beast-Enchanted-Talking.jpg)
It is supposed to be a mirror after all, so I needed to make the round part reflective. I wanted the mirror to have some white padding as a bottom layer to give it a softer look, but batting can be expensive and this show is on a budget so I used an old mattress cover and hot glued it to both parts of the frame. Now that the electronics all work well, and I have the power source attached its time to assemble the frame. But the strip at this point is getting power from the USB port of my computer - that won't work for the stage! Ah, how about that battery pack I use with my cell phone? It works great - the light show goes on! It works! The Trinket microcontroller is a little different from other Arduino boards in that you need to press its reset button to put in it "ready to receive" mode to load the code.
#MAGIC MIRROR BEAUTY AND THE BEAST CODE#
Once I had the code written, I complied it, and then uploaded it to the Trinket.
![magic mirror beauty and the beast magic mirror beauty and the beast](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a3/53/c4/a353c44e3a19e4cd7cdbd03d1640e868.jpg)
Including the libraries and declaring variables are both in the first screen shot, then the setup portion of the code where I indicate where the neopixel strip is attached and how long it is, and finally the loop part of the code that repeats as long as the circuit is getting power. I divided screen shots of the code into three parts. I wrote the code for this in the Arduino language, there are a ton of great introduction to Arduino Instructables if you have not tried using an Arduino microcontroller yet its time to give one a try - there are limitless fun, entertaining, and even useful things you can with these little wonders! I didn't secure the components with electrical tape yet because first I had to write a program to test the circuit, so far everything can be easily reworked if I had made an incorrect connection. It printed perfectly the first time, and even has pins and holes that allow it snap together securely. I found someone had already created a perfect Trinket case and published it on Thingiverse, so I fired up my 3D printer and printed one using teal colored PLA filament. I added some additional support to the connections by using short lengths of heat shrink tubing and later tightly wrapped the connections with electrical tape. Then I soldered another wire from the ground pin on my Trinket to the ground pin on the neopixel strip, and a third wire from the 5 V tab on the neopixel strip one of the ends of the switch, and the other end of the switch to the 5 V pin on my Trinket. I want to send information to the strip so I connected pin #1 on my Trinket to the din tab by soldering a short length of wire. If you look carefully at the neopixel strip, you can see that one end has a din (for digital input) and one has a dout (for digital output). Time to connect everything, write a short program, and test it out. The smallest microprocessor I had that works with the Arduino language I had at the time was a 5 volt Trinket from. I'm planning on using a physical switch between the microprocessor and the 5 volt pin of the neopixel strand so that when the actor or actress wants to turn off the magic mirror they can do with a quick switch. If I'm using a neopixel strand I only need one digital output pin. So next I had to choose a microprocessor to run the light show. The other Instructable will walk you through lighting your first string of neopixels, or refresh your memory if its been a while since you messed around with these fun little lights.
#MAGIC MIRROR BEAUTY AND THE BEAST HOW TO#
For details on how to use them with an Arduino microprocessor visit my introduction to neopixels here.
![magic mirror beauty and the beast magic mirror beauty and the beast](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/0KQ_CcHkqA4/maxresdefault.jpg)
These are a specific type of red-green-blue LED's. I rummaged through my electronics collection while thinking and found a spool of neopixels. Time to figure out how to add a light show for the mirror!