ok have each "plane" of led's on a seporate ground go there is 10 wires which are ground each line is attatched to a switch of some sort so only one plane is grounded at one time. Now make each "stalk" (verticle line) have its own power supply. now you can chose which plane and which stalk there for allowing control over every single led individually. Now just like a monitor you have the controler light up only one led at a time but have to do it so fast that you do not notice that they are. Now all you have to do is program which led is comming on at what time and its duration. As for the controler itself you will have to use several chips eash one say controling a different colloum (a sheet of stalks) so you will use 10 chips. now each chip is programabol so you just program them to do what you want it is quite simple realy if you think about it.
Gatecrasher is correct. It is simple when you stop and think about it Crude picture but it conveys the idea he was talking about. Each LED in a row and plane (horizontal) is conected by the ground or -. I did not connect each ground in the plane, just the top row, simply because the picture would be even more confusing. By applying power to say A1 and G2, LED 4 would light. If power was applied to C2, B1 and G1, LEDs 8 and 18 would light. this would rquire only one row of LEDs to be seperately connected to ground ( not neccessaryli in the same row since they are all tied together) and would allow the LEDs to be stacked as in the pictures. DUH, thanks man, my head hurts lots less now. Welcome to the forums!
Hi yeah, I'm a bit like you, I can solder, and follow schematics, but thats about it . So what I need to find, is a kit that gives me the 2D output. (lines for volume, and a 'history' of the lines...) It dosn't even seem simple to me, to code it... but I assume they have 'kits' out their, that do just that.. so Only have to extend the led output from that kit to a line of leds in a cubic shape. L
Hi again damn, its indeed quite simple.. Didn't think about that yet.. ok, so we figured out how the cubic shape works. But how do I go and controll this with a computer like he did? I think that that will be more or less impossible for me with my limited electronic skills to create this... :s L
ok you are going to need 110 connections for a box of 10x10x10 led's. So you would need to have eithe 5 LPT parralel ports. Or make your own comtroler out of programabol chips. And for sound input have a microphone and an audio controler board which tells the chips what to do. That is going to be alot of soldering my friend
this is pretty much how i decided it would work, but in your method, if you wanted to light just led 9 and 4 then you would be applying power to A1 and C1 and grounding G1 and G2. but this would result in 4, 6, 7 and 9 lighting.... (i worked out how to get around this earlier today, but see if you can figure it out) edit: to input to the array you could use a microcontroller that would take a signal from the parallel port on the computer and output it to the led array, so you would only need just the one parallel port (and some skills with binary)
Yep. Didn't think it through. Back to the drwaing board. I know how to wire it to make each LED a single "pixel" but not yet how to do it and make it look like what I think James did. My head hurts again.
Hmmm Well.. I would love to built something like that, and control each individual pixel(led) with my computer. That would be really awesome. But I don't think I have the 'programming' skills to do this. If there would be a program out there that would allow me to load in 10*100 bitmap files (black and white only). And the software would translate it into 10*10*10 3D. And then some controller bord would make the cube work. Then I would make it, nomather how much soldering it will take. But I don't think that exist, and I can't make it myself. So I'll just look for a kit, that displays the 'volume' and 9 history items of the sound, with just a sound input (no computer needed). Like the first movie. but it does seem alot of work if thats the only option for it.. :s hmmmm L
remember you are working on a cube (3d polygon).. if you need to light 9 then you will use c1,g1 and another g? or c? something like this: sorry if didn't explain myself.. i know what i mean but i can't explain it
Leds have two inputs.. no more. a + and a -. if you connect them the wrong way, they won't work, the act like a diode.. (light emitting diode). So I'm sure it works like has been sed.. when he is talking about 'c1' or 'g1' , you power up a whole 'row' of leds... they just aren't 'grounded' yet, so they don't light up. then the second he will connect 'g1' or 'c1', will ground another row of leds (different direction). where those two 'meet' you will have a powered up led... get it now? I'm sorry if you understood already, but I think you didn't reading your post. L
is this post to me? i think you didn't read TheoGeo's post.. what happens when you want led 4 and 9 to light up? you ground g1 and g2 and apply voltage to a1 and c1, but that will end up lighting leds 4,6,7,and 9.. now you get it? i was explaining that you though of a way to light up the leds just using a 2D model, but remember theres ir a Z axis.. lets say you use z1,x1,y1 to light up led 1 and use z1,x1,y2 to light up led 2.. say you want to light up leds 3 and 6 from the following pic.. so you ground g1 and g2 and apply voltage to c2 and c3............ now you see what would happen? i dont know what would the third line be.. it isnt voltage nor ground.. and of course i know the leds only got 2 legs.. positive (+, voltage) and negative (-, ground), im not that stupid.. Look at this image so you can see it more clearly.. link to image: http://img78.exs.cx/img78/528/c1-leds.gif several minutes after thinking i came to the same thing.. you could end up lighting leds you dont want to using this model too. now my head hurts too sorry if i confused you more, i wrote this post like in 20 mins. as i cleaned up my room, had breakfast, etc.
Basically you need to create a 2D matrix, like shown above. Connecting LED's in a matrix like this will lead to the problems that you're thinking of where LED's will light up along the row that you might not want to - You have to multiplex these LED's, there's no way around that. So either scan rows or columns to light up every possibility of LED's in the 2D matrix. To create the cube, you add rows of these 2D matrices to create another axis. Again, you'd want to multiplex these rows so that only one 2D matrix is on at one time, if you wanted to make efficient use of your microcontroller/computer.
Understood, but looking at the crappy pictures on the web site, how is this cube wired. As Loavh said, it looks like they are all stacked and soldered together. So how is it possible to create a cube that looks the way it does yet not have each LED seperately connected to a controller?
if you read the site, they key part is where he says he can refresh each led at over 60hz, which sugests to me that the leds are not lit at the same time, but instead he is rapidly flashing each led to create a similar effect, it would be a nightmare to program but should in theory work feel free to pick my theory apart
I just assumed he was talking about a using the 60hz from the AC instaead of building a seperate clock into the cirtcuit. Since he is in NY that would make sense. But even if you are correct, it still does not explain how the cube can look so "wire" free and still be able to address each LED seperately. Then I guess the question is why he would do that if he has the ability to control each LED independenly. I keep wanting to think that he is using the natural polarity of the LED to somehow control the current flow for the different columns and rows, but I can't get a grasp on that. You know if he applied + to the anode and - to the cathode and the following LED was reversed, then the first would light and the other would not. Then reverse the flow and get the opposite effect. However, I would suspect that prolong exposure to reverse current would eventually destroy the LED. I don't know, just throwing something out there.
Thats a good idea but wouldnt work with this many leds, plus all the leds on each row would have to be wired the same way around incase you wanted to light more than one on each row.... but that would mean they would all have to be the same way around.... so it simply wouldnt work.... the flashing on and off rapidly is the only thing i can think of... that way you could just work one layer at a time and avoid the wrong leds lighting... say the eye sees things as one image at around 60hz, so being able to flash each layer at 60hz and only one layer is ever on at once with 10 layers.... does this mean you would need to be able to refresh the leds at 600hz
hey guys think about it does a tft monitor llight up more than one pixle at a time? the answer is No it it lights up each individual pixle one at a time but it does it soo fast you dont realise it. Now the same applies to the cube you dont light up led's 4 and 9 at the same time you altinate them lighting up led 4 then 9 then back to 4 and so on but you do it fast enough thet you dont see it flicker (ie 60hz) now if you wanted to do an arrow say. using the image as a template you would lightup numbers 2 then 3 then 5 then 6 then 7 then 8 .... 10 .... 11....14 ....15 (you get he point). Now if you wanted to be really smart you could activate G2 and C1 and light up number 5 then ground all the layers and activate C2 and light up 2,6,10 and 14 at the same time then keeping them all grounded deavtivate C2 and activate C3 and light up led's 3,7,11 and 15 and then just ground G2 and activare C4 to finally lightup led 8. so do you catch my drift?
yeh i get ya... thats why i said it i actually figured this out a while ago (if u look at my earlier post) i just didnt post it as i wanted to see if any1 could come up with another solutiuon first
ok after a long and hard stare at the picture of the cube on the website i can see that the +legs are joining vertically to eachother and the -legs are joining horisontally to eachother. this confirms that we are on the right track though i did notice that not every X,Y,Z pole was in place i am guessing that he has used a zig zag pattern to connect up the grounds but on thing buging me is that on one side of the cube there should be somewires joining the box (where i guess all the electronics is hidden) for the grounds of the layers. so at this point me = confused
