So, I decided the first thing to do with my Arduino was to create a LED cube (I love those things) and seemed to underestimate the work (and money) it took. Never soldered a thing in my life and only vaguely remembered electronics from high school. Great thinking. :~
However, after some very long days, it seems to have worked out quite nicely. I used 10 TLC5940 chips, multiplexed over 7 planes using the TlcMux library (thanks acleone!) and the ghosting fix provided by denos in this topic.
Why 7x7x7 you ask? I simply ran out of money to buy the extra 169 leds and 2 extra TLC's to upgrade to 8x8x8. Good reason, huh?
I watched a ton of videos of led cubes before I settled on a 5x5x5 blue led cube. I think that cubes with odd numbers give more 'artistic' options for pattern development as there is a true center line for every surface. Just subjective, but that's my thoughts. And yes, even 5x5x5 was a challenge to solder up and keep alignment straight and lots or interfacing wires needed from the cube to electronic parts.
The odd number indeed served me well in the end. Especially the Conway's Game of Life benefits from this by giving very nice patterns because of the true center line. My alignment is off by up to half a centimeter in some lines by the way. I can still fine-tune quite a few, but it won't be perfect (but I didn't expect 'perfect' anyway ;))
I'll open-source the code in a few days, when a few bugs are resolved.
Cool work, nice result!
Thanks for pointing me to the "gosth fix", I am getting mad about multiplexing a circuit and I experience the same thing. I have to give it a try...
What is the "shiftPower" function? Could you post it?
Very nice work. 7X7X7 is impressively large. I wonder if you couldn't do a crude 3D bust of someone famous and have it be recognizable. Maybe a video game character. The color would help a lot in making it pop.
What about something like a 3D letter rotating inside the cube.
What about something like a 3D letter rotating inside the cube.
Well I thought that the building of a led cube was a challenge, but that was nothing compared to the tedious and time consuming task of coding in new or additonal light patterns. What is really needed is a PC based GUI pattern editor/generator that could allow one to click and point led lights on and off and build a script of patterns and then generate a hex code or possible even a C array(s) that could then be easily pasted into a sketch and recompiled.
I really liked building, testing and debugging my cube project, but I don't have a clue how people can have the time and patience to manually create complex patterns just using the Arduino IDE?
Well I thought that the building of a led cube was a challenge, but that was nothing compared to the tedious and time consuming task of coding in new or additonal light patterns. What is really needed is a PC based GUI pattern editor/generator that could allow one to click and point led lights on and off and build a script of patterns and then generate a hex code or possible even a C array(s) that could then be easily pasted into a sketch and recompiled.
I really liked building, testing and debugging my cube project, but I don't have a clue how people can have the time and patience to manually create complex patterns just using the Arduino IDE?
Lefty
i'm trying to make somthing like this but what i really need to make it work is a way to make my laptop hold the code that determins the patterns. my laptop would send the signals to an arduino mega,(1280) and haveing my Arduino contain an onboard code that can make sense of what the computer tells it then send the signals to the shift registers/demultiplexers/i2c's then to the cube. the problem i face is communicating between my laptop and the mega..
friends iam a fine art student but am also interested in elocronic works i wached 8x8x8 led cube video and i impressed then i make 4x4x4 led cube used arduino uno r3 its work perfectly now i mke 7x7x7 led cub so please any one send me the 7x7x7 arduino mega 2560 please...........
