Arduino Projects For Dummies

Chapter 15

Building an LED Cube

In This Chapter

Building a 3 x 3 x 3 LED cube

Writing LED cube patterns

Programming the LED cube commands

Building your enclosure

If you haven’t seen one already, you will soon! LED cubes are getting really popular, and it’s easy to build a simple one with an Arduino Uno. This project shows you how to create a 3 x 3 x 3 LED cube with just a few inexpensive parts. It’s easy and fun to build and you can get really creative with the patterns it displays. In the process, you get to brush up on your soldering skills. After you understand how it works, you can expand to 4 x 4 x 4 or larger cubes with an Arduino Mega.

Building it is only half the fun. If you're like me, you'll get really absorbed in designing animated patterns for your cube. The companion website for the book, www.dummies.com/go/arduinoprojectsfordummies, has an LED cube pattern generator, which will help you to try out different animation sequences and will also generate the code you need automagically.

You can expect to spend about five hours building your first cube project. Getting your ...