Cube of Rainbow Torment: LED Cube w/ cheap WS2812 / Neopixel panels

This is an LED cube with 384 RGB Neopixel / WS2812 LEDs, made from six 8x8 panels that are widely available.
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updated June 21, 2022

Description

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Here's how to build a simple RGB LED cube using cheap 8x8 WS2812 / Neopixel LED panels. The design is a single 3D printable piece, printed four times, that screws to the panels and forms a frame to hold them in place.

Parts Needed:

Build Steps:

  • Print 4x “ledcube_side.stl” at standard 0.02mm resolution
  • Insert nylon nuts into their wells of the part, use a drop of CA glue to hold them in place
  • Solder thin wires to the OUT pads on the LED panels (start with middle pad, it solders faster since less copper than V+ & V- pads)
  • Route the wires through the printed parts, solder the wires to the IN pads of next panel
  • Repeat until all wires are soldered
  • Attach panels to printed parts with screws, being careful to pull in wire slack
  • Note: the top & bottom holes have some alignment issues, so you may want to attach those panels with a single screw and/or double-sided tape

Coding:

By far the easiest way to get started with Neopixels / WS2812 LED is CircuitPython. Below is the code I used in the demo above and on Twitter.  Both Adafruit and SparkFun have really good guides on WS2812 LEDs.

 

 

# The Cube of Rainbow Torment - 14 Jun 2022 - @todbot / Tod Kurt
import board
import neopixel
from adafruit_led_animation.animation.rainbowsparkle import RainbowSparkle
leds = neopixel.NeoPixel(board.TX,64*6,brightness=0.2,auto_write=False)
rainbow_sparkle = RainbowSparkle(leds, speed=0.1, num_sparkles=15)
while True:
    rainbow_sparkle.animate(show=False)
    leds.show()

 

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