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ArcticMyst Security by Avery

Small RGB LED Cube

Things

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Hey guys, ever since I started working at Jaycar, I've been eyeing off these RGB LED cube kits they have: RGB LED Cube Kit 4x4x4 for Arduino - Jaycar Electronics

Well, the other day the manager asked me to take one home and build it up to use as a display, which I did :D

Now, my first impressions of this thing were the price is pretty high. For what it is, yeah, the price is probably a bit up there, but after building the thing myself, I'm actually pretty impressed with it.

For a start, the entire thing is made using PCB's, no soldering LED legs together, really takes the hassle out of assembling the cube itself. The driver PCB includes an ATMega32u4, so it has onboard USB, it also includes some prototyping area, some headers for an xbee module, and breaks out pretty much everything you could ever need for expansion. It's also completely open source, so you can download the schematics and modify it all you want.

DSCF1815.jpg


Not really a review or anything as such, just wanted to share the first LED cube I "built". If you have a bit of money to splash and want something useless but cool to put on your bench of kitchen table, it's a really fun project, and takes the annoyingness out of completely DIY'ing one. I love it :D

DSCF1811.jpg


Just a shame it's so distracting at night ;)
 
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Hey, things.

What a cool cube you have there. Do you have pics on how you soldered the LEDS??

How those cubes are controlled? They blink around randomly?
 
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Oh right! It makes a good piece of art IMO :D With a little programming you can even control it using USB. Cool. I'll build a single color one someday.
 
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Very cool. I don't suppose you could get LPF members a discount on them? :D
 

Things

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Haha, unfortunately no :(

Even if I could, shipping them overseas would probably ruin the deal though :(
 
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NKO29

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Looks amazing and i have a jaycar near me! unfortunately $80 is too much for me lol :) Good job though!
 

Things

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Maybe go down and see if they have one on display? They're relatively new so maybe not, but who knows :)

Indeed the price sounds a bit high, but when you consider the kit contains 6 8x8cm PCB's, a fair hunk of that price is going straight into the PCB's alone.

I'm not sure if Jaycar outside of Aus/NZ stocks these though, seeing as they're Aus made products (freetronics, who do all Jaycar's Arduino stuff)
 
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It looks great! At my local electronics store we have a single color one on display and even that one looks awesome in action. I'd love a RGB version of my username :cool:
 
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NKO29

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True, but i didn't mean it was overpriced :p I don't have a spare 80 bucks to spend... And i still dont have all the parts for my current laser build lol. i will go down to the store anyways just to see it in action!
 

ARG

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Now that's awesome! My single color cube was tilted to one side, the PCB idea is brilliant!

Does it have any built in color organ functions? I may have to buy one and turn it into a color organ :p
 

Things

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Haha nope, though I'd imagine it'd be pretty easy to implement. They have created their own library for it that just takes XYZ coordinates, and you can specify colour with hexadecimal.
 




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