Mini interactive cube

The initial cube was made using led panels on each sides, but it lacks one important piece, input, and only having orientation/acceleration is not optimal, this cube addresses that, and is slightly different, it has sixteen buttons on each of the six sides and they are all usable through OSC.

Enclosure

Cube sides and pixel ordering

Looking at the cube from the natural angle, from top (side #4) left (side #3) front (side #0):

Looking at the cube from the back (side #2) right (side #1):

Looking at the cube from the bottom (side #5) left (side #3):

Example

So if you want to turn on pixel #11 on the left side (side #3) you would adress the pixel by calculating side * 16 + pixel, so 3 * 16 + 11, so we want to enable pixel 59

In the OSC message /cubeNNNN/leds that would be the fourth bit (value 8) of the 7th byte: /cubeNNNN/leds 0 0 0 0 0 0 8 0 0 0 0 0

Front, pixel 0 to 15. Right, pixel 16 to 31. Back, pixel 32 to 47. Left, pixel 48 to 63. Top, pixel 64 to 79. Bottom, pixel 80 to 96.

OSC Messages

The device sends and receives OSC messages, these are the different ones.

All OSC messages share the prefix /cubename/ which is a 8 character string that can be configured, by default it's cubeNNNN where NNNN is a part of the wlan mac address.

Key press

/cubeNNNN/btn btn down

Namespace: /cubeNNNN/btn

Arguments:

• btn int32 - Which button
• down int32 - 1 = Button was pressed, 0 = Button was released

Gyro data

/cubeNNNN/rot rx ry rz

Namespace: /cubeNNNN/rot

Arguments:

• rx int32 - Relative rotation around X.
• ry int32 - Relative rotation around Y.
• rz int32 - Relative rotation around Z.

Accelerometer data

/cubeNNNN/acc ax ay az

Namespace: /cubeNNNN/acc

Arguments:

• ax int32 - Relative acceleration X.
• ay int32 - Relative acceleration Y.
• az int32 - Relative acceleration Z.

Update a single pixel

/cubeNNNN/leds led on

Namespace: /cubeNNNN/leds

Arguments:

• led int32 - Pixel to change
• on int32 - 1 = Lit, 0 = Not lit

Update one side

/cubeNNNN/leds side n0 n1

Namespace: /cubeNNNN/leds

Arguments:

• side int32 - Which side to update. (0 - 5)
• n0, n1 int32 - Two 8bit values, one bit for each led.

Update entire display

/cubeNNNN/leds ft0 ft1 rt0 rt1 bk0 bk1 lt0 lt1 tp0 tp1 bt0 bt1

Namespace: /cubeNNNN/leds

Arguments:

• ft0, ft1 int32 - Front side leds, 8 bits each.
• rt0, rt1 int32 - Right side leds, 8 bits each.
• bk0, bk1 int32 - Back side leds, 8 bits each.
• lt0, lt1 int32 - Left side leds, 8 bits each.
• tp0, tp1 int32 - Top side leds, 8 bits each.
• bt0, bt1 int32 - Bottom side leds, 8 bits each.

Configuration

When the device boots up, it will blink the first pixel a couple of times, if you hold it down at that time, the firmware will go into configuration mode, from there it will set up a wireless network named Cube Setup - NNNN, connect to that network and open http://192.168.0.1 to configure your device.

Components

• 1x NodeMCU ESP8266 Devkit
• 6x Adafruit Trellis + Elastomer Pads for buttons on each side
• 1x ADXL345 I2C Accelerometer (Sparkfun)
• 1x L3GD20H I2C Gyroscope (Adafruit)
• 1x USB Powerpack

Laser template

If you want to cut a simple enclosure, there's one included.