When I saw the new LCD glass appear in the Adafruit shop, I thought it would be a great item to include in my next mystery box prop!

LCD shutter glass panels are seemingly magical when used to smoothly fade from opaque to transparent, revealing secret objects hidden inside this box's shadowbox chambers.

This guide will show you how to build the Shutterglass Chamber, a mystery box prop built for an interactive mystery performance.

You can also use this guide as a generalized technique for fading LCD panels up and down in any project you can imagine.

Parts

To build the circuit you'll need:

Tools

  • Soldering iron and solder
  • Wire cutters
  • Wire strippers

For the cutting windows into the box lid, there are a number of tools you can use, such drill and coping saw, scroll saw, knife, CNC mill, laser cutter, box cutter and straight edge, and so on. Same is true for the shadow box compartments.

Materials

  • Box of rougly these dimensions: 22cm W x 13cm D x 5cm H
  • Gaffer's tape or hot glue and a hot glue gun
  • Black cardstock, cardboard, or plastic for the shadow box compartments

This guide was first published on Apr 01, 2017. It was last updated on Mar 08, 2024.

This page (Overview) was last updated on Mar 30, 2017.

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