DIY 3D 8x8x8x LED Cube

I guess that it doesn't arouse anyone's intellect. I think it's cool:) Thanks for posting this.
 
I would love to have one of these but I don't think I could build one myself. I have seen a smaller one on sale at thinkgeek but its to expensive for such a small cube.
 
Pretty interesting but you would have to really want this to sink in the money to make this.
 
I'm guessing each LED needs to be powered individually in order for only one in any particular row to be on off, so at 512 LEDs, at 30mA each (again guessing they're 5mm LEDs), that thing could potentially pull over 15 amps at a time.
 
Whoa, that thing looks wickedly awsome. Almost like a hologram there for a second :p
 
sfsuphysics said:
I'm guessing each LED needs to be powered individually in order for only one in any particular row to be on off, so at 512 LEDs, at 30mA each (again guessing they're 5mm LEDs), that thing could potentially pull over 15 amps at a time.
Click to expand...

They're using matrixing to save on I/O ports, so they probably are pulling less current too.

Looking through the instructable, they've got it so only one horizontal layer is on at a time. But they switch so fast, you can't tell. This is a pretty common technique. It's hard to find a microcontroller with 512 output pins, but by using the matrix they've setup, they only need 64 pins for the horizontal plane and 8 pins to switch the vertical axis (total 72 output pins). If they split each horizontal layer in half, they'd only need 32 pins for each half plane, and 16 to switch between them, so 48 output pins (could save a few more if you do a 23 x 23, but output ports tend to come in multiples of 8 and it's not worth it to save 2 pins), but they have to switch faster to get the persistence of vision effect.
 
Awesome, now all he need is different lighting next time and it can rock the web.
 
Who cares about the cube, I'm digging that song!

It's called Homeless - EP, just got it off iTunes. :cool:
 
I love these, check out the 16x16x16. Wanted to build one of these 8x8x8 for quite a while, but its a painful amount of soldering.
 
the fun would be in the build, but I dont have the soldering skills needed for that
 
Tell me I'm not the only one that thought of EDI from Mass effect 2 ..
EDI_Mass_Effect_2.png
 
this is the coolest thing i've seen in awhile. kudos to their creativity and execution.

anyone know the music? I need some new e-work background tunes.
 
Hrm, I can imagine building it but it looks like crap because your leds are not perfectly square
 
Am I the only one thinking ... scale it up, shrink it down, then you have a real 3D display?

seriously
 
yeah I was thinking the same... something like this could be the first building blocks of a true 3d display... pretty cool stuff.
 
toast0 said:
They're using matrixing to save on I/O ports, so they probably are pulling less current too.

Looking through the instructable, they've got it so only one horizontal layer is on at a time. But they switch so fast, you can't tell. This is a pretty common technique. It's hard to find a microcontroller with 512 output pins, but by using the matrix they've setup, they only need 64 pins for the horizontal plane and 8 pins to switch the vertical axis (total 72 output pins). If they split each horizontal layer in half, they'd only need 32 pins for each half plane, and 16 to switch between them, so 48 output pins (could save a few more if you do a 23 x 23, but output ports tend to come in multiples of 8 and it's not worth it to save 2 pins), but they have to switch faster to get the persistence of vision effect.
Click to expand...

i'm pretty electronics stupid so forgive my question here... but couldn't you have the programmed controller running on 5 pins?
strobe line 1, then send X,Y,Z, then strobe line 5. then have cheaper controllers driving each X line... I don't know :p
Then you're just driving BCD and you get all 512 individual...
 
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