How to build an 8x8x8 LED cube and control it with an Arduino

Step 5 Build the display case

Make your final product look nice:

I found this wooden chest at Hobby Lobby for $4 and thought it would be perfect since it has space inside to hold all the wire plus it looks nice. I stained this one red, same stain I used on my computer desk so they match.

Draw a grid on top the same size as the grid used for the soldering jig (.6 inches between the lines). Drill holes to allow the leads through the top, and drill another hole behind the grid for the layer/plane wires (from the transistors in Step 4). I learned the hard way that trying to line up 64 leads to go through small holes is very difficult. I finally decided to re-drill all the holes a little larger to make the process go quicker. I ended up using around a .2 drill bit.

Now that the cube is sitting on top of the display, bend the corner leads so the cube will stay in place as you attach the wires. Make sure you attach all the wires in the correct order.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32
33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48
49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56
57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64

And connect the wires between the layers (labeled 'planes' on the schematic) and the transistors. The transistor on Arduino pin 6 is the top layer of the cube.

If you get the wires wrong, it is somewhat correctable within the code, but it may require a lot of work, so try to get them in the right order.

Okay, everything's built and ready to go, let's get some code and try it out.

Comments

[ghostunit12]

 Hi, could you tell me what are the blue wires coming out of the arduino for?

[R-]

They are the triggers from the individual layers. They go from the arduino to the power transistors.