I was originally creating a 4x4x4 led cube but ended up creating a 4x4 led surface. It was going to have 64 LEDs soldered together in the form of a 4x4x4 cube, lit by a Raspberry pi pico but ended up being 16 lights soldered together. The cube shown in the video is powered by an Arduino Nano but I used a Raspberry Pi Pico. This surface allows me to do two-dimensional light patterns. Using circuitpython. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JACwa8wgQVU
- 100Ω resistor ×1
- 5mm led ×16
- Copper wire 3.5 inches ×6 (21 in)
- Raspberry Pi Pico ×1
- Jumper wires x18
- Solder
- Hot glue
- Wood
- Laser cutter
- Bread board
- Get a light to light up
- Solder the 4x4x4 led cube together
- Create code to individualize each light from the 4x4x4 cube and make them light up
- Create a class to put functions in to light up the LED’s in sequences Put multiple functions together and make it loop
The first step was to check every light and see if they turned on. After this I laser cut a base so that the led's could lie in it while I solder them to the copper wire. It was a 4x4 surface with 1.5 inch gap between each hole and .5 inches on the border. I then cut all of the wire into 3.5 inch pieces. Then I soldered all of the led's to the wire, connecting the positive side of the led's to the wire. After soldering each led to the wire I put hot glue on each of the connection so that they will not break. Then I soldered jumper wires to every negative end of the led's and hot glued each connection keeping the other side a male connection. I then plugged the male side into a bread board that was getting power from a Raspberry Pi Pico.
Most things did not work during this project. I tried to solder the led's to many different materials but nothing worked. I tried brass, aluminum, and metal. I also tried with copper wire that we found but it did not have a electrical current that went through it. I tried turing the heat up to the highest temperature but that did not help. Finally I found copper wire that had a current that went through it but I needed to strip all of the wire that i needed.
Another thing that went wrong in my project was that the soldering connections were not staying on. Eventually I put hot glue on all of the connections to solve this
I connected the wrong side of the led to the wire. I was supposed to connect the negative side and I connected the positive side. In the video that I watched they connected the positive side to the wire but since I ended up doing one layer I think it messed it up. This made it so I could not individulize all of the led's. The final thing that went wrong was that i could not stack the different layers onto each other because they were to fragile. I stoped doing the cube and just focused on one layer because I did not have much time left in the project.
Things that went well was that I got lights to turn on.
There are a couple reasons that the soldering connections were not well. The first could have been the temperature of the solder. During the project I kept it at 450°F becuase that is the max temperature. Most soldering on copper is done between 350°F to 600°F. If the solder went up to a higher temperature I would have tried this.
The second thing that could have led to the problem was that joints were solder starved. This means that I did not put enough solder on the joints. This could likely been from insufficient heat applied to the lead, resulting in a poor connection.
The final thing that could have led to the problem was insufficient flux. Flux aids in soldering by removing oxide films which form on the surface of metals being soldered. It increases the wetting ability of the solder, causing it to flow more uniformly over surfaces without balling up.
During this project I learned that soldering is very hard and takes a long time to learn and be good at. I also learned that hot glue can save anything. I was struggling for a very long time trying to get the solder connections to stick better and decided that hot glue would be great. Finally I learned that you should not be too ambitious with your first product. You need to start off very small and if you have more time slowly make the project better.
Next in the project I would create more layers and try and connect them, now that I hot glued that connections and they are stronger.