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4X4X4 RGB Cube

10/28/07
I have received 100 diffused LED from e-bay for $40. I need to find a place to get nice strait wire. I do not want to use the LED leads as they are too short and I want the cube to be spaced well. If you know of a place to order strait, bare wire please contact me

Here is a picture of a pile of all 100 and to the left is one clear and one diffused LED.
10/29/07
I placed an order for some 22 AWG wire, type D flip flops, a large proto board, and resistors from Digikey. I have decided to make the spacing of the LED about 1" to make it a 4"x4"x4" cube. Hypno Cube has many good ideas and they show how to wire up the LED so all the leads come out the bottom and not out the side like my 3x3x3 cube. I borrowed the D flip flop idea from them. The D flip flops are better than transistors because they hold their state until the clock line changes from low to high (high to low for some types). This way the pins on the micro can be changed with no affect to the LED until the clock is set. This allows for all of the pins to change at once. Also the D flip flops I ordered can output up to 250mA. My LED take only 10mA each and are still extremely bright. Unlike the Hypnocube I am using a dsPic so I can have 8 bit color or 16.8 million different colors, not 4,096.
10/31/07
My order shipped today and I should get it around Saturday. I also saw this video and I am going to use the hot glue stick like they did to diffuse the LED even more. I like the effect. Also I am now debating if I should do a 5X5X5 cube. It will almost double the LED (64 to 125). The only problem I have is that I need a new way to wire them together. I could wire it so I only need 40 pins (32 pins for the 4X4X4) but there would be 25 cycles instead of eight, making each LED only one 1/25th of the time.
11/1/07
I have decided to build a 4 cube first get the code working well and then build a 6x6x6 cube. If any one has a suggestion for wiring a larger cube please contact me.
11/2/07
The parts came today. The board's pads go through the board so the pads can't come off. Also I got the 22 AWG wire, here are some pictures.

I soon started the cube. I followed the instructions (mostly) on the Hypno Cube page. Here are more pictures of my progress.
After 7 hours of soldering here is the finished picture of the cube.

The above picture is the new 4X4X4 cube next to the small 3X3X3 one.

Tomorrow I will start the wiring.
11/3/07
After about 15 hours, 100 ft. of 22 AWG wire, a lot of Jack FM, and a burnt finger here are the finished pictures.
I am now working on getting a few colors to show up.
11/4/07
I have been working all day. The cube is now driven from an interrupt created from timer one. It can display 32,768 colors. Many of the visuals are generated with the rand function. I hope to get a better one as this one seems to repeat often. The cube is driven with three arrays. one for each color. There is also a buffer that is used in the routines and later updated to the arrays that are displayed. Here is the code so far. I have not commented the code yet but if you have questions contact me. Here is a video of today's work.
11/18/07
I have been working hard the past two weeks. The cube is now calibrated and the rand function is fixed. The coolest thing is that it is now sound sensitive. That's right, there is a mic. The dsPic reads the voltage and for the routines above it changes the speed but I have a new routine that changes color and size with the sound. The circuit for the mic is actually very simple. I found it here. I have a better camera to film with now, I was using my digital camera and it only has 320*240 so the new camera should be better if I can find its cable to connect to my computer.

Also I am working on creating comment input on the site.

I will try to get video up soon.
11/21/07
Here you go. Sorry same low quality camera.

12/1/07
See multiplexing for more on how the cube is wired and how multiplexing works
12/25/07
Merry Christmas! Here is the source code for the sound sensitive cube. Source code.
1/19/08
I ordered a PCB form Batch PCB. They sell PCBs in small quntities for a great price, $2.50 sq inch, with only a $10 setup fee! The boards are very nice. They are dubble sided, soldermask, and silkscreened. I have made my own PCB with a iron, photo paper, and ferric cloride, but this is way better. Only problem is it takes around 25 days.

I recived my PCB for the 4x4x4 cube. I have already started to solder to it, but I don't have all the parts yet so it will be a wile until it is done. Take a look.