turtlesoup2:
Ya that sounds good, should be pretty easy to switch to the shift registers. Is there a large difference in the brightness from the bottom led to the top led? Since I will only be using 16 resistors.
Brightness issues are not a top/bottom thing, in fact, it never lights the top and bottom LEDs at the same time. The variance in brightness is from lighting 0 to 16 LEDs. When you light all 16 at one time, its not as bright as when you only light a couple LEDs.
When the cube ran with resistors only on the planes (4) and shift registers, I noticed brightness variance. I changed the cube to use 16 resistors, and now the brightness is consistent.
Look in this other thread about 4x4x4 cubes, This post has a real nice circuit for running the cube. Its a more proper design.