Upcoming project: LED Cube 8x8x8
As already hinted last time my next electronics project will be a monochrome 8x8x8 LED Cube.
I chose this from a long list of possible interesting projects because its construction involves many of the areas in which I intended to work on something at some time.
- Raspberry Pi programming
- enhancing my basic electronics and soldering skills
- beef up my electronics prototyping set
- interfacing an uC/SBC with external hardware/components
- creating an electronic circuit without step-by-step instructions
- understanding and using an IC
- designing and creating a PCB, maybe even etching it myself
LED cubes in particular striked my attention a few years ago but at that time Ialways repelled by the sheer complexity and number of components in most of the LED cube building instructions. But when I saw some another building plan for a LED cube I realized that I could use my Raspberry Pi to create a much simpler control circuit. And so the decision was set.
My plan for the next steps is to build a prototype (3x3x3) to test my whole concept, get comfortable with all the stuff and then scale it to 8x8x8. At first I'll set up everything on breadboard and maybe, if I'm sure that everything is finished on the hardware-side, make a permanent and smaller control PCB version. Probably as a Raspberry Pi shield.
The progress of this project will of course be documented on this blog.