6x6x6 LED Cube

thingiverse

This is an LED cube that is 6x6x6, for a total of 216 LEDs. It's controlled by an Arduino Uno board. Each LED is individally addresable and can be set to 8 levels of brightness. Instructions The cube uses a 3A 5.4V power supply. The cube is controlled by an Arduino Uno mounted under the LED board. Power for the Arduino comes from the LED cube supply thru a USB cable soldered to the board. The file led_cube.zip has the Eagle schematic and board layout. The Base was printed on a Makerbot Replicator with a layer height of .3mm and 100% infill. If you are using the open Scad file for the box be sure to check the path for the MCAD\boxes.scad file on the first line. Open Scad will not give you an error message if the path is wrong, it just crashes. The file libraries.zip has the Arduino libraries for controlling the cube. The file LED Cube Demo1.zip has a demo program for the LED cube. The cube is built with the LEDs in layers that have all the + (Anode) leads connected together and then to the layer drives. The vertical colums have all the - (cathode) leads connected together and then to the 36 ZX drives from the LED driver chips. There is a cut needed to separate the Arduino 5V pin from the 5V rail on the board. The cut is made as shown below on the back/top of the board (The side without the silkscreen) right next to the Arduino reset pin. Cut location The Arduino is powered thru it's USB connector. Take a USB cable and cut off the end that plugs into the Arduino. Leave about 5 inches of wire on it. Strip the outer insulation off and separate out the red and black wires, cu the other two short and cover them with tape or shrink wrap. Solder the red and black wires into the pads labeled +5V and GND respectively, as show below. Power cable connection