BlinkyCube - RGB addressable lights in the gear cube.

thingiverse

My wife was playing with Emmett's cube gears and suggested that it'd be cool with a light in it. If I'm going to all that trouble, I'm going to put in more than one light :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Jl0vh4w2LU I grabbed a few WS2811 pixels out of the project box and made a few changes to the cube, including scaling it up to 5 inches. This is an early beta version of this cube. Instructions, wiring diagrams, etc will follow, and I'll probably make more changes to the pins. This version has 9 RGB leds, 1 in the center, and 1 in each corner. I'm running it on an arduino nano using FastLED. It's powered by an 18650 3.7V battery in a case I printed (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:535688/) that runs into the arduino and LEDs via a boost converter I salvaged from an old USB battery pack. [edit, I've been through a few batteries in this thing, and the little envelope style lipos fit better than the 18650. Right now I'm using this 2500mAh one: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01KJ07A2Q/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1] I've included several versions of the pin, since some are easier to get in than others. I'm really liking pin 4, it holds it tight without being too difficult to get in. It's tricky, because orientation matters on the LED insertion due to internal structure on the waterproofed WS2811 pixels I'm using. My current test code is up at https://github.com/bobiam/blinkygearedcube/blob/master/blinkycube.ino You'll need to adjust some of the arrays to match your LED layout. EDIT: The code has been updated to reflect the hall effect sensor I added to the cube on digital pin 3. Holding a magnet near the cube now advances it to the next pattern. Hoping to get a full writeup in before Maker Faire Austin 2016, but time is getting short and I've got other projects to work on too. If you don't have/want to include a hall effect sensor, you should probably use the version from this commit, which predates the sensor:https://github.com/bobiam/blinkygearedcube/commit/c3d7d7d8d34ff5b0e07a963634f6b75ecf3ae9ce Print Settings Printer Brand: Printrbot Printer: Simple Black Rafts: Doesn't Matter Supports: Doesn't Matter Resolution: .3 Infill: 15% Notes: This took about half a kilogram of filament to print. I printed mine in glow in the dark filament. This has upsides and downsides. On the upside, if the battery dies, it's still glowing and that's cool. It also glows from the inside, which is a neat effect. On the downside, it means I can't make the cube go black. If I turn off all the LEDs, it's a dull green glow, which seems to get brighter as your eyes re-adjust to the lowered light. It's not a bad effect, but it robs me of the true black that can be dynamic in light patterns. I'll probably print my next prototype in white, which diffuses the light well and allows me to turn off the LEDs and go dark. How I Designed This A mix of openscad, sketchup, and tinkercad. The gears (small and large) are the 2:3 set scaled up 2.5x The center is made of two parts: A hollowed out version of the center:https://www.tinkercad.com/things/6qQmJLiaiCj-blinkycube-center3/? A door that I press-fit to the hole in the center:https://www.tinkercad.com/things/1Lo1FD8doBt/? The pin I like most, pin 4 is here:https://www.tinkercad.com/things/dpkZDvXr9KZ-blinkycube-pin4/? Custom Section Wiring So, I'm wiring this up to an arduino nano at the moment. My wiring is pretty simple, power/ground from battery goes through a boost converter to both VCC and ground on the first LED and the arduino. I'm running data from pin 6 on my arduino to the data line of the ws2811s. I just salvaged a boost converter out of an old USB battery charger (a lot of the cheap ones use 18650s as their actual battery). I'm using these: http://www.amazon.com/Qiorange-Ws2811-Diffused-Digital-Addressable/dp/B013FU2PZ4/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1450062460&sr=8-2&keywords=ws2811 - I start with LED 0 in the center block, then 1 in a small corner and spiral my way around the cube. All of the test code I've written defines the small/large gears and sides/top/bottom so that it's easy to swap out the LED ids if you wire yours differently. I found it easiest to push the LED through the hole in the center piece, then put the pin in the gear, then LED into pin, then pin into cube, but feel free to experiment. Depending on the size of the LED, you may need to experiment with different pins.