Close up look at the enclosure for all the hardware of this project.
This diagram allows me to see where connections need to happen, how arduino uno connects with either solder wire or jumper wires sending data from the chip itself to the shift registers and the ground levels to the LEDs and successfully sending data.
In this phase of my project I used a breadboard to make every single connection following the diagram below and making sure the project was functionable. In this state I tested LEDs in order to verify that arduino was sending data and LEDs were functionable.
After Figuring out how everything was going to be assemble it was time to start making the 8x8x8 cube, at this point there was only a matter of patience and lots of soldering. The way the cube was made was, created a grid of 8x8 of 1 inch apart from each whole and put every LED in one of the holes. I also took some time making the negative and positve leg of each LED round so I could facilitate my work when I was about to start soldering the LEDs.
At this stage of the project, with the help of the diagram, I was able to solder the PCB board, every connection was verified with a multimeter, no bridges were created on the conncetions made. There was one line for ground, one for volts, one for datapin, one for the clockpin and one for latch pin. There was also connections on every resistor and also connections to the 8 ground floors and the 64 positive LED rows. IC sockets of 16 pins were used to mount the shift registers 74hc595 and one ic socket of 18 pins to connect the uln2803.
After a long soldering process, The cube was finalized and mounted into the lid of the enclosure, in the second image we can see the connections to every single positive exit of the 64 rows of 8 LEDs coming from the top. Everything was kept as clean as possible and organized so it wouldn't create any confusion when connecting every cable into the finished PCB Board.
In the final phase of my project, we can finally see the finished piece, on the left image we can see the cube turned off but with the right amount of lighting that displays every single detail of the cube and box. On the second image to the right, we can see the cube and the enclosure in a different angle.
In the end of this project we see four differnent images that display different designs on the lighting. Different angles and different lighting to see the difference in space and lighting that the LEDs create.
After roughly 50+ hours of work, I can happily say I achieved what I was looking for when thinking what I wanted to make for my graduation project. I overcame many obstacles, shear some tears when things were not going the right way, rebooting, resoldering, and tons of dedication in order to achieve my goal. I am happy to say that my stay at SJSU has given me the ability to create things I never thought I could. This project also represents what I initially wanted my project to represent. Nolstalgia played a huge role not only here but in most of the pieces I creat myself. I am a true believer that practice makes perfection and this project is a clear example of it.
While making my first soldering PCB Board, I never checked any connections with a multimeter and that was my biggest mistake in this project, I created bridges from the ground connections to the 5 volt connection and every time I tried connecting the cube it was overheating and at some point, the power outlet was smoking. I lost roughly 5-10 hours of soldering work with this mistake. Using a multimeter will save you time, mistakes and frustation.
