{"id":16,"date":"2023-01-07T19:39:36","date_gmt":"2023-01-07T19:39:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/electronics\/2023\/01\/4x4x4-charlieplexed-led-cube.html"},"modified":"2023-01-07T19:39:36","modified_gmt":"2023-01-07T19:39:36","slug":"4x4x4-charlieplexed-led-cube","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/electronics\/2023\/01\/4x4x4-charlieplexed-led-cube.html","title":{"rendered":"4x4x4 Charlieplexed LED Cube"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am a firm believer in “standing on the shoulders of giants<\/a>” and borrowing ideas that already exist and combining, building on them or delivering your own take on them – after all why re-invent the wheel, just because you happen to want to use a wheel in your design? This was good enough for Sir Isaac Newton<\/a> and Linus Torvalds<\/a>, so why not ordinary people like me?<\/p>\n

I have wanted to build an LED cube for a while now and thought that an RGB version would be good and after my experiences with Cherlieplexing<\/a> with my Binary Clock<\/a>, I thought I would give this a go.<\/p>\n

The best example I have found is that by Asher Glick<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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This was also used as the foundation for the one built by Hari Wiguna<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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I have decided that I will use a bare ATmega328P<\/a>, as I can buy these from RS<\/a> for \u00a32.14 each, I can probably do away with the requirement for an external crystal or resonator by running at 8MHz from the internal clock, so the only other costs will be a suitable perfboard and some LEDs.<\/p>\n

I am using\u00a0some perfboard I bought from\u00a0Ebay<\/a>\u00a0– 10 pieces of 7x9cm at \u00a31.80, or \u00a30.18 each.<\/p>\n

The LEDs came from an Ebay<\/a> auction for 100 x 5mm RGB LEDs that I won for \u00a35.65 (inc P&P) which makes for \u00a30.0565 each or \u00a33.616 for the 64 required for this project.<\/p>\n

This makes the total cost of this project, excluding any additional wire or solder, to be just under \u00a36.00.<\/p>\n

I have drawn up the schematic in Eagle<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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I have also drawn it out using DIY Layout Creator<\/a>\u00a0(this was done using the perfboard mentioned above):<\/div>\n
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The colours are those used by\u00a0Asher Glick<\/a>\u00a0on his website, I intend for the horizontal and vertical connections to be additional structural wiring, hence why I have turned the spires by 45 degrees.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Here are some shots of the LED spires in various stages of construction:<\/div>\n
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Legs bent out at 90 degrees:<\/p>\n

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Legs bent back around ready for soldering:<\/p>\n

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A completed spire<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am a firm believer in “standing on the shoulders of giants” and borrowing ideas that already exist and combining, building on them or delivering your own take on them – after all why re-invent the wheel, just because you happen to want to use a wheel in your design? This was good enough for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/electronics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/electronics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/electronics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/electronics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/electronics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/electronics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":156,"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/electronics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions\/156"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/electronics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/electronics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/electronics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/electronics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}