3D Effects with 8x8x8 Borg LED Cube

Overview

The project consumes a total of 512 LEDs from an 8x8x8 matrix where the controller board is designed to interface with RS232, CAN, and two joysticks from the C64.

Explanation

Each LED of the Borg cube can be controlled individually through an Atmel ATmega32 microcontroller. A time-multiplexed or matrix wiring can be used to control the 512 LEDs the cube is divided into 8 planes of 64 LEDs where each plane is switched about 100 times per second. This will seem like all 512 LEDs are controlled individually at the same time with four brightness levels available.

The complete software is written in C for the AVR-GCC compiler. An animation was built to develop new animation on a PC which is programmed with the open GL-framework GLUT. This is divided into threads where thread 1 displays the frame-buffer and thread 2 replaces the wait routine and other files included. This does work so well where the simulator animation is normally cut and paste in the source of the original and makes it running.

The project started with a 3x3x3 prototype to get an idea on how to do the wiring of the LEDs and cube. *Another LED Cube Project.