3D LED Matrix
Hardware- 3 Devlogs
- 4 Total hours
A 4x4x4 3D LED Matrix Cube.
It is done!
I wired up and coded the 4x4x4 cube today. Hit an immediate wall: the Arduino Nano only has 13 digital pins and I needed 20, so I added two shift registers to drive the columns. Once that was sorted, the code was almost a straight copy from the 2x2x2 prototype multiplexing logic scales cleanly to another dimension. It works!
Soldering over 100 connections is so fun!
Because of the dimension of the led cube(4x4x4), I soldered over 100 connections. It toke about 4 hours, because it is one of my first times soldering, but I forgot to record a timelaps for it 😭.
At least it is finished. Now only need to wire it up and write the code.
Prototyped a 2x2x2 LED cube on a breadboard
Today the first step toward the 4x4x4 matrix I’ve been wanting to build for a while, was made. Started by watching a video on 2D matrices to understand multiplexing, and adding the third dimension turned out to be surprisingly straightforward: each layer connects to ground through a transistor, each column connects to a power pin, and that setup lets you address LEDs individually or sweep the whole layer at once.
Getting the wiring clean enough on a breadboard that nothing shorted took a few tries, but the prototype is working.
Tomorrow I’m soldering the full 4x4x4 cube and writing the animation logic, hoping it doesn’t immediately go up in smoke.
