ECE5 LED Cube Project

Project Goal and Functionality

• design an LED Cube with individually controllable LEDs
• use shift registers to manage all the outputs
• control the cube with an Arduino and program in cool sequences

The LED Cube features 64 individually controllable LEDs, arranged in a 4x4x4 cube. Every layer has a common cathode between the 16 LEDs in the layer. Every column of LEDs holds a column of common anodes. In this way, a single LED can be activated by 1) grounding its layer, and 2) powering its column. The 16 columns are wired to a parallel shift register combination. The two shift registers provide the 16 bits (2 bytes) to control the 16 columns. The layers are connected through a resistor to 4 digital output pins on the Arduino board.

Hardware Components

• 64 LEDs
• protoboard
• 4 (100Ω) resistors
• 2 shift registers
• wire

Tools

• solder
• wire cutter

References

• 4x4x4 LED Cube Arduino Uno - Instructables
• Shift Out Guide - Arduino — includes parallel shift registers