Making LED Cubes

Over my summer break I will be making a bunch of arduino tutorials on YouTube. My first ones will be making LED Cubes. I am going to need alot of help with this. The first thing I will need help with is using shift registers. I dont know how to write the code for those. The other thing I wil need help with is making a program to animate the leds... I am hoping you guys will be able to guide me through this... I'm only 11 years old... ::slight_smile: :stuck_out_tongue:

So...
You say you're an 11 year old noob to arduino (or at least certain applications of arduino) who says they know nothing about something that you want to teach others, so you are asking us to teach everything you need to know, and in turn, you will teach others what we teach you.
:-?
................
Okay then!
Well, where do you want to start? What do you know? What components do you have that you can work with (may not matter as you could just buy things, you have time)? We need some more info.
I would take a look online for tutorials on led cubes and shift registers, etc. Maybe a video tutorial...wait... :slight_smile:

LadyAda has kit you might like: http://www.adafruit.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=6&products_id=5

Now I haven't bought the kit, but it sounds like lots of fun. And even if you don't want to buy it, you can read the instructions.

I believe it uses a shift register or latch for the same purpose you want: to conrol leds. She also has some kind of program for creating the image.

Well, 13 is 1, so I'd start there.

@ awlo: LOL... all that is is the blink sketch...

i know the hardware side of multiplexing, but not coding...

i also want to make a program to light the leds... i want to have a little grid where i can click the dots and they turn the leds on and off... and you can also set the slide display time...

If you want to use shift registers you can. You would need 8 of the 595 or hef4794 chips to drive 64 LEDs. I've done a simple one. There are two programs listed, one does a knight rider without any fancy bit twiddling to do a decay and the other allows serial port control of a single LEDs.

I've not worked out how to do a matrix with shift registers yet but someone may have which would allow using less parts.