RGB LED CUBE

I wanted a nice 8 * 8 * 8 RGB LED cube. I have looked at ebay and they cost around £100! So I decided to make my own.

I know that the human eye can only see things that are relatively slow, I saw a helpful video about it, and decided that I would control them layer by layer with a delay less than 1 (microseconds).This gives us 64 LEDs to control (88 ) and we need 192 inputs (643) because they are RGB LEDs.

So, my problem is that I cannot control that amount of leds with an arduino, so how can I?

Thank you

sorry if I got anything wrong, I am still new to arduino

also I was wondering where I could get around about 500 RGB LEDs for cheap and what size I should get them. 5mm is pretty cheap, but is it too small? also should I get them diffused or clear ,whats the difference?

10 mm LEDs are huge!

This might be much easier (and vastly brighter) if you used "NeoPixels" aka WS2812 LEDs, presumably in one of the pre-assembled forms.

I think you meant a delay less than 1 millisecond. The NeoPixels make this pretty much irrelevant as there is no requirement for them to be continuously multiplexed.

thank you, i will need about 500 of them tough, will this be cost effective?

I figure WS2812 devices on eBay at about three or four for a (US) dollar mounted, or ten for a dollar for the "bare" chips so if you put the work in, it could be worthwhile.


Note that you need a serious power supply!

A limitation is that these have less than 180° visibility. Larger ones with diffusers (look for WS2811 also) have somewhat more visibility. I suppose a really big cube would not be all that bad if cheap enough.

thanks