my eightCubed

So this is it. I finally decided to build my very own eightCubed 8×8x8 LED cube. It has been designed and developed by Ted Markson and Edmundas Balciunas from Lumisense.com.

I first came across this project at BlueMars, the company I work for. We were asked to do a light installation for the Luminale festival in Frankfurt so one of my collegues checked the internet and came up with the eightCubed Project from Lumisense. With the help and cooperation from Ted and Edmundas we then build sixteen (16!) 8×8×8 cubes which can run in sync with each other. More infos about our Luminale project “Puls der Stadt” can be found at the “Puls der Stadt” Blog and the Lumisense Website.

After helping out building the cubes for the Luminale project it really got me and I wanted to have one of my very own cubes. At first I thought about building the eightCubed v1.0 which is an older version of the cube we build for the Luminale but all schematics and board files are freely available at the Lumisense website. But after having a bit of a talk with Ted about the pro’s and con’s of version 1.0 he finally convinced me to build the current eightCubed revision (v2.2 to date).

So Ted supplied me with an almost complete kit, including:

• 520 common anode RGB LEDs
• Main controller curcuit board
• A curcuit board with buttons for controlling additional functions
• 20×4 backlit LCD display
• 5V power supply unit
• 12 flat ribbon cables including connectors for hooking up the cathode pins of the LEDs to the controller
• Another flat ribbon cable to hook up the LCD display
• Additional cables for connection the common anode pins to the controller
• A USB cable and USB adapter
• Bare copper wire
• A template helping to build the lattice

These are pictures with some of the contents of the kit.