5x5x5 RGB LED Cube
This project is to make a small LED cube that you can leave on your desk displaying animations. I also wanted to control the brightness so that at night time you can turn it down.
Supplies
- Arduino UNO
- WS2811 LEDs 5mm
- 20ga craft wire
The first step is to solder the LED's in this formation. Note that layers 1 and 3 direction of the LEDs are opposite because the data in pin has to match up with the data out pin from the layer below, so the layer above starts at the opposite corner.
Once the 5 layers are finished then you need to solder 4 main vertical supports on the corners. You'll find that one side of the cube is negative and the other side is positive.
Next you need to find a box to mount the cube onto and put the Arduino UNO inside. I found a Pandora box which happened to be about the right size and also made a DIY Arduino that I could leave inside it. There are holes drilled through the lid for wires.
The last step is to program the Arduino, the code can be downloaded from here. It requires all three files for it to work.
Code:
I am still working on a way to make the brightness control more responsive. At the moment when you twist the knob you have to wait for the current animation to finish, then it will read the knob and set the new brightness and start the next animation. If it tries to read the knob during the animation it makes the LEDs flicker. Still trying to find a way to improve this.
Also I want to add a push button to manually select which animation to play. I'm sure there is a very simple way to do it, I just haven't found a way that works yet.
The design and code I got from here, so credit to Doug Domke thanks.