4x4x4 LED CUBE w/ ARDUINO

This is a 4x4x4 LED CUBE i designed using an ATMEGA 328 chip using an arduino bootloader.
This means that I needed to control 64 LED's using only 12 pins, "2 for com". I actually used a technique called multiplexing to give the effect that more than one LED is on at a time. The cube is just a giant 8x8 grid, of which is divided into 4 stacked sections. If you imagine an 8x8 grid, and all of the LED's, the design was to connect all of the anodes and cathodes in an array so that each can be turned on or off by its given address in the array, just ground one of the columns and supply power to one of the rows. So now we are down to 16 pins; 8 rows and 8 columns. I then repeated this same procedure by making the two sets of 8 pins into 4x2 grids. This is how I then got this down to 12 pins.
http://www.kevindarrah.com/

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• LED
• cube
• multiplex
• arduino

[armstrongc02]

how difficult would it be (is it even possible) to use an arduino uno board to program a 4x4x4 cube made of RGB 5mm LED?

[kdarrah1234]

@armstrongc02 could be done, but you would need some extra components, like a chips that can do all of the PWM for you, so you would only have to send out the value you want the LEDs to run at, I might try this some day

[pike2001]

is there a way to se the arduino code to make it do this loops . 

[kdarrah1234]

@pike2001 to make it do animation loops? that's how I have it set up, I'll be releasing the code soon for this from my site, check out my other videos on multiplexing and how it works for more info on how to build one

[SirLovestain]

Khdarrah, have you heard of God Damn Electric bill? If not, you should definitely do so.

[kdarrah1234]

@SirLovestain yead dude, good one! They are awesome!

[Josh350]

@TheGTAIVModChallange the arduino forums



[TheGTAIVModChallange]

Also do you know any forums i could join that could help me out?

[TheGTAIVModChallange]

Hi i want to make a 3x3x3 cube like this can you point me to a good tutorial on how to build it and program it? All the tutorials i have found dont explain how to wire it all or program it. they just have confusing diagrams.

Or is it possible for you to help me through the process of building one?

Thanks

[eric2530]

At the LED end, yes, you need 64 pins. But the original question was how to control 64 pins using just 12 pins of a microcontroller. This can be done using logic or demuxing. Multiplexing is a different concept (or rather the opposite of muxing/multiplexing). Anyways, I think you get the idea on this.