LED Cube

Theses LED cubes are actually easier to make than you might think. If you take it one step at a time this project is not that difficult. That being said I did not right the adruino code for this. There are many codes out there to make the lights light up differently. This cube is a 4x4x4 which means 64 leds total. basically you will have four rows. You will make one row at a time then connect all four rows. The bottom row of leds will have the 16 positive pins stick out down word, and each of these will have 4 leds soldered in the isle there in. All of the ground in each row are connected. Then each row gets connected to it's on ground. So you will have 16 wires coming from the cube for inputs. theses will go to the aurdino with a resister inbetween for each one. 16 resistors total. Then from the cube will be 4 seperate wires for the ground wires one for each row. 20 wires total coming from cube to the aurduino.

Tools

solder iron

solder

power supply

wire stripper

needle nose pliers

drill

Supplies

bread board

piece of wood

tape

leds

resistors

wires

aurdino

First start by soldering one led at a time.

I marked where I started the leds on my block of wood.

I found a template online for the distances, you want the distance so that the leds, legs overlap the next led.

start in top right corner hole. Fold over the ground(-) pin to the out side.

bend over the next leds ground pin and over lap the first led and solder.

Do this for the top row. then you want the ground pins going vertical towards the top row your just soldered.

Then you can add cross wires the other way to connect the grounds and add strength.

Once you have your four rows of 16 leds sodlered together. you are going to wanna solder the rows together. Theres is going to be 16 led pins sticking straight out from the led positive leads. These need to be soldered together to the the same led to the same led to each. So each of the 16 out pins will have an led in each row soldered to it. 4 leds per 1 out put pin one in each row. Each one of these out put pins will be connected to a resistor before going into the aurdino. I use a board with solder mounts on both sides. I have the leds sticking threw this board soldered to in on the bottom side. From these 16 solder points for the leds i have wires being soldered from the led pins to the resistors. the resistor size i use are 130 ohms. from theses resitors i have them going to the arduino.

there is going to be 4 ground wires too. these come for the four layers of your cube each ground layer gets connected to it's own wire. I stripped a wire and added it to each row soldering it to the row then soldering it to the board from the bottom side. then run a wire from these ground pins to the ardiuno.

Before soldering the resistors i put them in a bread board for testing the circuit. I numbered my leds starting with the top right being led 1, then going down led 2, led 3, led 4. then the next row will be led 5. led 5 will next to led 1. with 6 being under that next to 2.

solder a wire to pin from led 1 sticking threw the board.

put this wire in the bread board to resistor 1.

do the same with all 16 leds in order.

I am using the arduino uno rev 3.

using this board i wired leds 1-14 next to each in in pins 1-14

you can see the green and blue wires for 15 and 16 are next to the four ground wires on the arudino.

then the last two led pins get wired in the analog inputs next to the ground pins.

on mine the ground wires are the black white gray purple next to each other

Once I tested my circuit on the bread board i soldered the resistors to the same boards as the leds. From the bottom side there are wires coming from the leds going to the resistors 1-16. from the other end of those resistors I soldered wires that will plug into the aurdino. same with grounds. i soldered connector pins to my wires for making it easier to plug into the aurdino. I mounted the project board in a box project box and cut a spot for the aurdino to sit so that i can either plug in a battery for power or a usb plug to power it. I did not go into the code at all, I would recommed somebody else's for that. I just thought i'd show the building part if it could anybody at all.