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LED Cube (Simple Idea)

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edgari

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I was looking at youtube videos and i came across a an LED Cube, i noticed that one can buy a kit but that doesnt have fun at all...

YouTube - 3X3X3 RGB LED Cube PIC

Is there a way to make an LED Cube (3x3x3 to keep it simple) that lights up to the sound of music (maybe hooked up to a speaker), create different patterns with a variable resistor and maybe using 555 - 4017s??? without having it to program on the computer.
 
I was looking at youtube videos and i came across a an LED Cube, i noticed that one can buy a kit but that doesnt have fun at all...

YouTube - 3X3X3 RGB LED Cube PIC

Is there a way to make an LED Cube (3x3x3 to keep it simple) that lights up to the sound of music (maybe hooked up to a speaker), create different patterns with a variable resistor and maybe using 555 - 4017s??? without having it to program on the computer.

To make it do everything shown in the video without a micro controller would be pretty difficult. I wouldn't want to attempt it. Even if you could figure it out, I'd think all the ICs required to drive it would take up way more room than the LEDs themselves. I don't want to discourage you. You could make an LED cube without a micro controller it just won't do everything in the video. Also, this would be a good project to learn micro controllers with if you're so inclinded.
 
It's not actually that complicated... Use a shift register to drive the LED's. Then you can use other shift registers and logic to generate patterns, mind you this will cost you MORE than actually using a micro controller.

The development software for many types of micro controllers are free, generally their either ASM based (device dependent code) or C based with some device dependent additions. The hardware and software for a programmer can be relativly simple and inespensive. I'm not sure if Nigels site covers it but. may help with basic PIC usage. There are other types of micro controllers available on the market if you want to investigate further.

It depends entirly on the amount of effort you want to apply to your project and how willing ou are to stick with it when you have to learn something new that will more than likely frustrate you to some degree.
 
3x3x3Cube.gif
You can put a mic on the front end of the 4020 to make the LEDs appear to flash at the rate of the misic.
 
What kind of software/hardware does one need to learn mico controllers?


It would be very possible and not that hard to make one or several LEDs flash on and off or light in sequence using standard logic ICs but to make a circuit that does everything shown in the video would be hard. In the video, there is cascading, flashing, shifting through colors, etc. All these things would not be that difficult by themselves, but add them up and you've got one pretty complicated circuit.

A micro controller would be the only way to go about this in my opinion. As for the best way to learn micro controllers, this has been a subject of debate here before so I'll start out by saying that this is just my opinion based on how I learned.

I like using a development board. It is essentially a circuit board with a bunch of hardware built into it. Hardware like, push buttons, LEDs, LCD displays, etc. Some development boards also come with an onboard programmer. The way you use a development board is you stick your micro controller (the chip) into it and then you write a program on your computer for the micro controller to execute. Once the program is finished, you connect your computer to the development board and load the program onto the micro controller using the programmer. You can then use the built in hardware of the development board to test the program.

The company I purchased my development board and software form was MikroElektronika. It was an investment of several hundred dollars I made quite a few years ago and I'm still benifiting from it. There are cheaper ways to go about learning this material but in my opinion the development board and sample code I go tfrom MikroE made it super easy.
 
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