How to build an 8x8x8 LED cube | Hacker News Reader

How to build an 8x8x8 LED cube

daid.mine.nu

266 pointsbvi37 comments

I wonder how much it would take to mass produce these and sell as programming toys/tools? I'd buy one.

PS: if someone else would be serious about pursuing this, i'd love to be a part of it

If you were truly mass producing them, it'd be cheaper to get them made in China/India, and cooler if you could do it with smaller leds in a smaller cube.

Thinkgeek sells a 4x4x4 version for $80: http://www.thinkgeek.com/interests/techies/d71d/

Doesn’t look programmable, though? That would make it next to worthless for me, unless it’s possible to hack it easily (not that I would be able to do that).

i have this one http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/rainbow-cube-kit-rgb-4x4x4-...

I've put it together but haven't had the time to test it out. It also requires one of these: http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/rainbowduino-led-driver-pla...

So it is most definitely programmable, It was a bitch to solder together though.

Great idea! To be honest though I lean more towards toughening them and selling as nightclub lights. Even the smallest of places spends megabucks on their lighting rigs, and this would be a toy that every bored sound tech would love to play with :)

Edit: I'm not the only one to have thought about this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cLLyfop3QI

Edit2: This company appears to be offering them for sale in sizes up to 32x32x32: http://www.seekway.com.cn/e/ledsys9.htm

http://www.seekway.com.cn/e/3d/h32/video.htm

Amazing video here!

Before you wonder about the 'crappy resolution' do the math, 32x32x32 is 32768 individual leds. The video appears to be of a 32x32x16 array.

Those look to be RGB as well. So that is 4 connections per LED (red, green, blue, ground).

Price for this one is $400. A lot more expensive than I thought.

http://www.seekway.com.cn/e/3d/a08/detail.htm

Wire up an interface so you can control it from a lights desk and you could charge 5 or 6 times that.

Our research lab recently created a more involved version of this using fairly cheap materials that's much more expressive:

http://www.cs.columbia.edu/CAVE/projects/3d_display/

(Don't miss the video at the bottom of the page.)

Really cool. I really want to play that 3D maze-like game.

The link says this was created in 2006/7. Have there been any advances since then in terms of resolution, or otherwise?

Not directly, but there was some work on animating speech in virtual avatars[1] (constructed from a single image of a face) which uses the cubes to make animated 3d avatars.

What I found especially interesting is that even though the point-etching in the cubes is static (and of a generic head), faces are mostly similar enough (and the animations required for speech small enough) that looking at the animations actually looks very realistic in person.

[1] http://www.cs.columbia.edu/CAVE/projects/avatar/

Why use different kinds of static point clouds? If you have a one that's dense enough and a projector with enough resolution, can't you display any 3D model to as much accuracy as your resolution allows? Or are the different point clouds tailored to certain kinds of models?

The instructabliss site is almost as excellent as the LED cube!

Yes amazing, I used to have Instructables in my rss reader but had to remove it due to the articles being totally unreadable.

Instructables has pulled a 'scribd'.

Yes. I had seen that led cube instructable a few times, but the complete redesign of the instructables page design is where the real interest is in this page. No ads, all of the pictures and step links and the top. Simple, accessible and usable.

They are stealing content from instructables.com -- how is that excellent?

Check the URL. It doesn't look like it's stealing content, just reformatting it. Like Readability for Instructables.

I work for a company that does content protection, and even I fully support this instructabliss... Instructables has become very cluttered and unusable.

It's excellent because people have contributed a lot of great content to instructables, but it's unreadable with instructable's current design. ("Log in to see more than one sentence!")

I'd love to have this. I'd make a 3D snake game out of it. Unfortunately I don't have the time and knowledge to build something like this cube.

This is so cool, it makes me salivate a little. The author said it took 4-5 days for the construction and another 4 or so for the software. Anyone know how long it takes for someone without much electronics background? I have a vision of a bunch of unfinished components sitting around on my kitchen table for... months.

The level of the instructions is such that you should be able to hit the ground running, debugging the circuitry might take you a bit longer, I'd start off with a much smaller one to try to get some experience with soldering and handling components, maybe build a few $10 kits to get proficient, then build this. Shouldn't give you any problems.

We built a shitty oscillator in passive circuit classes. This type of thing, and Mythbusters, always makes me think how awesome school ought to be.

Yea, I know. When I was in school I kept wondering why I couldn't just build things using math / science instead of just learning the rote info / methods.

I'm currently building a 4x4x4 cube with full fading/multiplexing, using a bunch of TLC5940 ICs. Placing it in a dark perspex obelisk; it's very dorky .. but I can't wait to complete it.

Someone should implement Pong in this cube. Now that would be cool.

1. Could have put some more movement in the camera work to show off the parallax.

2. Next: RGB for 4D.

Das Labor (a hacker space) has been doing these cubes for a while. They even have a multi-colour cube now: http://www.das-labor.org/wiki/Blinken_Borgs

The amount of soldering for RGB LED's is absolutely insane.

Suggestion for cool side project: attach an accelerometer and do some fluid dynamics simulation. A bit heavy on the math side; you'd need a good foundation of calculus for engineering. All the rest is here:

http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~rbridson/fluidbook/

Finest example: hanging from the ceiling of Zurich's Central Train Station. 25,000 lights in 24 bit color... Enthralling!

http://www.thecoolhunter.co.uk/article/detail/1286/3d-led-li...

Any EBay mass seller willing to buy bulk and sell a package with all the components needed ?

Don't mind paying extra to have it shipped in one box.

Sparkfun has a 3x3x3 kit for $69: http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9867

You could make holograms with this.

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