Another shiny project that could likely benefit from FastLED integration. All open-source, open-hardware. Looks like it’s using a Spark Core.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lookingglass/l3d-cube-the-3d-led-cube-from-the-future
Power consumption doesn’t make sense…
512 LEDs driven from a 5v 1a power supply?
How much is the dark draw per WS2812B again?
They mention in the project page that it’ll run off 5V 1A for most applications, but for “super intense” visualizations they’ve included a 2A adapter.
The 8^3 cube would draw almost 31A at full brightness all leds. While you might not let your users do that, even 2A is grossly under-specked.
Take this project for example, 1440 leds and they power it with 150A power supply to comfortably deliver a theoretical max of 86.4A.
And the 16^3 cube has 4,096 leds!
I’m not sure if you could do this and have that be a safe amount of power for all of those leds.
https://plus.google.com/102282558639672545743/posts/CFDxGMRhXsb
Yep - 4096 LEDs at 60mA per LED (which I think is typical, isn’t it?) would be ~245A! Something definitely doesn’t make sense here.
Probably the leds are multiplexed?!
The SmartMatrix also draws just 4A and not the expected 60A because there are basically only 2 lines = 64 leds on at a time.
@Stefan_Petrick , that’s what I thought too, but their page says WS2812B, not traditional analogue leds.
Good thing I’m planning on 8-16 way parallel output support as part of the support for the spark core 
Damn, I can´t stop thinking about cool 3d setups now…
Likewise, Stefan. I can’t justify the cost ($275 if you get in on the early bird), but I also don’t really want to build one manually myself.
It turns out the big one is powered by a 150A power supply. Makes sense.
They said they keep brightness down to 20% for the little one, and that’s how they can power it off of 2A.
I thought they said 150 watts (so 30A). In any case, that combined with reduced brightness, and perhaps something like only one layer powered at a time certainly makes the power requirements more believable.
The leds are arranged vertically so any horizontal animation would require most of those sticks to be powered.
Certainly interesting.
I too noted the power draw and almost shat myself.
Also interested in the “viewing angle”. I can’t quite tell how the WS2812B chips are mounted, but unless there are multiples in each pixel (which there doesn’t seem to be) I’d guess you have to look at it from the top down to see everything.
Looks like they’ve responded to power questions on Make: http://hackaday.com/2014/11/29/l3d-cube-takes-the-work-out-of-building-an-led-cube/#comment-2195935