3D Snake 8x8x8 LED Cube

thingiverse

The Idea The classic game of snake can be played on this 8x8x8 LED cube. The snake is controlled by a joy stick and two arcade style buttons to control the direction of the snake. The joy stick controls the movement inside of each plane and the buttons control the up and down motion going between each of the planes. Each time the snake eats the candy it grows and the candy reappears in a new location. The Build The joy stick is made of two pieces the stem which attaches to the analog joystick device and the cap which makes it easy to customize to change based on your likes. To hold the joy stick device in place there are two more 3d printed parts that connect it to the structure and to two switches. Between the joystick device and the two switches the system can detect direction in the x and y direction. The Z direction is controlled by the two arcade style buttons. The sides are designed to be used by a 3d printer or a laser cutter. The 3d printer I have access to would not let me print the pieces I needed so the laser cutter was the next best option. The pieces are secured with brackets that have been printed out. This structure houses all of the circuitry used to control the cube. A material list is shown in the gallery. The Cube The Cube is make up of 512 3mm Blue LEDS the cathodes of each layer are connected and the anodes of each column. The Circuit The program is stored on a PIC microcontroller and programmed using the pickit 3 debugger tool. The circuit consists of 8 8-bit shift registers one to control each wall of the cube. One 3 to 8 multiplexer to control which wall gets lit up when and 8 transistors to control when layer will light up and when. Pictures of the schematic are shown in the gallery. Videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNqL_bxC_Hs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4S9d8WYimY