I roughly calculated the work time I spent on building the cube and I came to a total of approximatly 25 to 30 hours. That includes

• bending all 520 LED pins,
• soldering the LED rows,
• building the planes,
• wiring all the LED pins,
• preparing the baseplate (cutting, drilling, grinding and spraying),
• wiring the baseplate with the cathode- and anode-array wires,
• cutting the wires,
• and finally building the cube plane by plane (soldering the ties and cathode wires).

So in the end I have to say, even if it is really a hell lot of work to do it was totally worth it and I can only strongly suggest, if you like this project and you would like to have a cube of your own, get yourself an eightCubed Kit as soon as they are available.

Here are some impressions of the finished cube including two videos showing some sample animations.

Stay put.

Just think of it. You have only one template which is needed to hold the planes in position and you really could use another template to help you solder those frickin’ horizontal ties. Sorry for my language but I was really pissed yesterday. Not pissed about the cube, or anyone involved in the development… hell no! I was pissed about me because I couldn’t think of something to help me at first. Fortunatly when I chattet with Ted about my problem he asked me if he should send me another template. Somehow that reminded me of the tape I used to fixate the template still lying on the table and I thought “hmm, how about swapping the template with tape so I can use the template for something else?” … and guess what? It worked! This way I had all ties soldered to the two planes in no time.

So this is really the time I have to thank Ted again and again for all his effort and patience with all the questions I had so far. Oh and Ted will also send me another template for better stabilization of the cube. Thank you Ted!

Soldering the cathode wires to the LED pins was a bit tricky in the end with all those loose ties hanging around but it worked pretty well.

Anyway, I think, the image above really looks like a borg cube construction-site. doesn’t it? And now remember what Locutus said:

Resistance is futile.

As you can see, I’ve already finished connecting the first plane. All the test patterns are working just fine. Not much to add for now. Just enjoy the nice pictures.

Nevertheless I recently continued my work on the cube finishing all the planes. They are now ready to enter the final construction phase but before that will happen I need something the lattice will stand on. A baseplate.
Perfect material to work with is particle board (German: Pressspan) from an old cupboard. Cut to a square of 30,5 cm² it’s big enough to hold the lattice (which has an edge length of 24,5 cm).
As you can see on some of the images below, there are 64 pairs of holes. Each pair has a hole that is drilled all the way to the bottom. That hole is used for the wiring. The other hole is only drilled halfway through. It will be used to hold and stabilize the lattice on the baseplate.
After all the holes were drilled, the baseplate was grinded and then spraypainted with black paint to give it a nicer and darker look.

So let’s get on with it and finish the planes. It will take a bit longer than I previously thought but I will come back to you as soon as I’m finished.

More images will follow.

After I could feel my hands again I started soldering the LED rows. A total of 64 rows are needed. By the time I’m writing this I have already finished about two thirds (44 rows finished, 20 more to go). Later on, the rows are used to build the planes. Each plane consists of 8 rows and the resulting 8 planes will be put together to form the cube.

Here are some images showing the progress of soldering the LED rows.

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.