Thursday, January 20, 2011

Hardware complete.

So after a few more hours of cutting and fitting, the cube is now hardware complete! ..

Pretty much anyway:) There might be a few more minor and cosmetic adjustments, like maybe i'll paint the ribbon cables black, or I might make a cover for that side of the box, but I kinda like the exposed look of the whole thing, nothing to hide.

I have to admit I think I botched the cable routing a little bit, the ribbon cables are much more of a mess then they have to be. The routing from the driver boards to the cube inputs is far from optimal. This is due to me changing my driver interface part way through the build. It's something that could definitely be solved in software, but I really can't be stuffed hacking the firmware anymore.

I also have to fix the power jack and maybe think about rubber feet, those ball end nuts might be a bit tough for resting on wooden surfaces. Apart from that, i'm planning to get back into the programming and work out some more patterns and maybe even some controls, like buttons, but that feels a little less likely at the moment. Will have to wait and see how I go.

Also, i need to get a can of air duster, it needs a bit of a clean.



3 comments:

  1. Wow that looks wonderful. I'm a bit stuck for words in one respect but I have some experience with multicolour LEDS and using PWM controllers from microprocessors and microcontrollers and gating the PWM signal(s). I side tracked myself by teaching woodwork but after seeing this and other similar sites I am re-enthused in electronics and programming. I wonder what language the Cube is programmed in and what the data structures in the program are. Also what other mathematical shapes and movement can you create in the 3D space etc.
    Mike

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  2. Hey there Mike, thanks for the compliment. The cube runs from a "Microchip PIC32" microcontroller. You program it using straight "C" in the microchip "IDE" which is called MPLAB. "data structures"? The cube is represented by a simple data array in my code, if that's what you mean. The "3d" space thing is what I'm stuck on, I'm just not a good enough programmer. I'd love to get some fancy "math shapes" in there but so far the only patterns I've managed to make are fairly simple loop operations, and you can really tell. I'd love to get a real programmer to help me out with the next bit, i'm almost at the point where I think I might hire one for a few hours..

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  3. Hi -vespine,
    congratulations for your cube project ,
    i have completed a led lamp with tlcs and avr , and actually working on a 2d RGB matrix .
    im planing to use 74hc595s for multiplexing the rows , and the 3 tlcs driving the 16 columns at the same time.

    Is it possible to get your multiplexing schematics , to learn from your cube approach,
    thanks,

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