Finally!!!
Here’s my… well almost… finished 8X8X8 cube.
Made essentially from:
512 8mm diffused RGB LEDs with integrated WS2811.
512 surface mount 0.1uF (1206 size)
Teensy 3.1 with the OCTOWS2811 adaptor.
5V 30A PSU.
Around 250 feet of 20 AWG tinned solid copper wire.
12" X 12" ½" MDF material for the base.
I have yet to do anything intelligent with animations. Currently I only have my test sketch that cycles all LEDs between Red, Green, Blue, Purple, Yellow, Cyan, White and all OFF.
With that very minimal test sketch, I am able to update the whole cube about 500 times per second. In the posted video, I am running this simple test loop for all basic colors:
void loop() {
for(int i = 0; i < NUM_LEDS; i++) {
leds[i] = CRGB(255,0,0);
LEDS.show();
}
for(int i = 0; i < NUM_LEDS; i++) {
leds[i] = CRGB(0,255,0);
LEDS.show();
}
etc… etc…
I also include a few pictures that gives some idea of the build itself.
Ooops… meant to post that under ‘Show off your work!’
Actually, I think I’m a bit over my head with the animations sketches in 3D… I will most likely need support for this soon.
Fantastic! I want one so bad, but I can’t even imagine how much time it would take me to build. Build another and sell it to me, and I’ll hook you up with animations!
A fair amount of my effort went in figuring out how I was going to align the LEDs and designing and building the jigs you see in the pictures. It would be a lot easier for me to build another but I would definitely not want to ship this
@Jason_Coon
I did actually manage to get one of Peter’s sketches loaded… The tortoise and the hare sketch but it did not play well since my slices are actually connected in a zig-zag fashion from the bottom up. (Wiring simplicity!)
For my test sketch, I did not care about that but for real 3D animations, I need to correctly map the x-y-z co-ordinates to my 0-511 LED addresses. I need to take care of that first and then hopefully, I can steal more existing L3D sketches
Hi @Mark_Kriegsman ,
There is one video he posted about Atom visualisation and I would really like to get my hands (eyes !) on the sketch.
+Peter Chestna, that sketch is not on the Pastebin link that Jason provided. Would you mind sharing this ? Thanks !
Hi @marmil ,
You can zoom in to one of the photos I included to see the results.
I actually soldered them manually using my old but trusted Weller 60W iron equipped with a relatively fine tip !
First, I applied a bit of solder to the bent out GND and 5V leads (they are the 2 inside leads of that addressable RGB LED)
You need a very good set of small needle sized tweezers to pinch them in the middle and hold them firmly while you just apply a very small amount of solder to one end.
You then position the cap so that it just sits exactly between the GND and 5V leads and just tack the one side of the cap with the solder quickly.
It holds in place nicely while you solder the other side. You let that connection cool a bit and then you go back to the tacked side and solder that correctly.
I wanted caps on all devices, just like on the strips but of course did not want anything visible.
Was not sure if I could solder them small caps with my regular iron but it went surprisingly well !
I see to remember you were thinking about testing each LED for this project to make sure you didn’t solder in a pixel that was off in it’s color balance. Did you end up doing that color check?
@allanGEE I hear you but I do not want any of the light reflections that you can see in the L3D cube plexiglass casing.
I will cry like a baby if any significant damage happens to it
