We get a lot of tips about LED cubes. They’re a great build to explore a lot of different things, from the circuit design, to current source and sink, and of course there’s the firmware. Why don’t we see a million of them on the front page? Well, we have seen a lot, but most of what is sent our way doesn’t exhibit such a clean build. It’s obvious that [Justin] took a lot of pride in his work on this 4x4x4 single-color cube.
Hidden away under one of the protoboards is an Arduino that drives it. A lot of the components were salvaged from the e-waste bin at his University. This includes the 12V AC wall wart he uses to power the device. A bridge rectifier converts to DC, and in addition to powering the LEDs there are a couple of USB charging ports. After the break you can see and hear it in action. The cube pulses to the music but the flip of a switch will disconnect the speaker if you want some peace and quiet to go with the light show.
If you’re looking for a challenge, this 8x8x8 RGB offering is several orders of magnitude harder to pull off… block out a lot of extra time if you do decide to take the plunge. We also heard that [Benchoff] might try to make a cube with some of those through-hole ws2812 pixels.
Nothing impressive here. the led’s look pretty overage, the sound is awful and I’m sure those voltage regulators get a bit to hot when he uses the USB-ports. And he even put an entire arduino in there and not just the microcontroller.
Don’t get me wrong, I do think it’s great when somebody creates something. I’m just not impressed with this cube. And this should be one of the better led-cubes hackaday receives ? hmmmm
And about those ws2812 pixels, it would be possible to make something that looks awesome, but to me led-cubes is mostly about solving the multiplexing part of it. Using ws2812 would be some easy hardware, but with some great software and minimum 8x8x8 led’s that would be really awesome.
And vertical video too!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt9zSfinwFA
First time i’ve seen a LED-cube without any animation… Boooring!
Don’t be so mean. I like this project and respect everyone that is able to do that. There was someone who really worked hard on it and the result is really good!
If you are going to put electronics in a transparent case, at least make sure that the *visible* part of wiring/PCB are a bit more presentable.
Same can be said about clothings.
I have done this when I was a student
http://s29.postimg.org/fq8jo3jfb/cube_2a.jpg
http://s7.postimg.org/6thm8oqgr/cube1.jpg
http://s29.postimg.org/xr568kbh3/DSC_0094.jpg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ydc-vMSWxGg
He should have used the type of led they use for xmas lights, they have the top cut off flat then a cone drilled inside that flat part so you get a nice point of light with wide viewangles while being small.
Of course the best way to do that is to get actual xmas lights and harvest the LED from that.