8x8x8 RGB Led Cube with Teensy 3.0 and TLC5940 first light

[goaran]

Hi everyone,

i want to share some work i did using the Teensy 3.0 and the TLC5940 PWM-driver library.

first some pictures:


Its an 8x8x8 RGB LED cube with common anode LEDs arraged in layers (as most cubes are build)
At the front there is a pannel with 4 pots (3 for color one for speed) and two pushbuttons to select the demo (and two status led (yes, there werent enough LEDs in the project))
by now it only runs some test programm that switches every LED in each layer to red one after another, then green then blue. Size is 35^3cm^3 the base is a bit bigger.

in the future i will program some more sophisticated demos, as well the playing from SD card (the SD alrady works)

During the building i made some experience with the TLCs that i want to share with you. I am using 12 TLCs for the 3 color * 8 * 8 LEDs in each layer. I first tried to drive them with 5V as described here. However this did not work for me with more than 6 TLCs. I got some weird flickering in all the LEDs when adding more TLCs. The solution was to use 3v3 as supply volrage for the TLCs (which also matches the datasheet). If you need the higer current you can drive with 5v Vcc i recommend to use some level shifters (however i have not tried this). Another thing that occured was that when running all 12 TLCs i sometimes got some flickering again especially at the end of the daisychain. Here adding an additional Pullup to blank at the final chip solved the problem.

At the moment i have not done any documentation yet, but as soon as i have some more interesing demos i will upload the sources and some schematics.

 

[lostcarpark]

Looks very cool. Can all the LEDs be lit at once? This has interesting 3D visualisation possibilities.

 

[PaulStoffregen]

Wow, that must have taken forever to build so carefully! Pretty impressive.

 

[goaran]

@lostcarpark

yes all leds can be set to any color (3x8bit RGB) at once or in any kind of animation. (or not really at once but by activating all 8 layers one after another very fast and setting the LEDs of each layer to the desired values a full 3D-frame can be displayed) another possibility is to activate all layers at onece and just display colums of one color)

some animations i am planing is the visulaisation of zernike polynomials as well as some matrix-style rain ans some static color stuff to use it as a mood-light.

@paul
thanks, yes it was lots of work, the soldering of the cube took me about one year (with maybee 1 hours/week of working on this project) and the building of the rest took also several months.

 

[lostcarpark]

Great that you've full RGB control.

The resolution is probably a bit low for Star Wars style holograms, but worth a try?