I am senior in the Computer Engineering Tech BS program at the University of Southern Mississippi. For our senior project we had to design closed loop project. A few students went into building robots with various sensors, or attempting communication with the CAN bus, or Home Automation Software, but I chose to build a 16x16x16 Led Cube.
There are a total of 4096 LED's all soldered together by their individual legs. The project took 3 months of design, and another 3 months of nonstop everyday building. I didn't have a partner, so if more than one person could contribute to building it, you should be able to get it done quicker.
Its pretty much a small 8 bit computer. Most of my circuits are wire wrapped, but all were originally laid out to be milled. But time became an issue. So I wire wrapped all the circuits, except for one.
It uses the HC12 micro controller, and 18 outputs from the device to control the cube. It has a 8 bit data bus, a 5 bit address selector (since I'm using 32 latches to save the data for each column onto), and a 5 bit decoder for the Layer Selector. I tried to minimize the amount of outputs needed. But, the only other way would've been to use shift registers, but I found writing software and wiring the latches to be easier.
I won 3rd place in our local IDCC competition that included Computer Engineering Tech, Electrical Engineering Tech, Information Tech, and Computer Science seniors.
I have more plans for the cube, these were just the first programs that I implemented. Yes they are pretty elementary, but they're still good. I plan on interfacing a gyroscope to display a 3d vector plane, but I recently came up with the idea of interfacing temperature sensors or ultrasonic sensors that would detect a person, produce a face on the cube, and follow the human. Would be very neat. And not impossible.
So check back for more vids from the cube.
