Totally Cool
For LED Cube RGB 8x8x8 Kit Arduino Compatible
This cube is amazing, the kit is comprehensive, complete down to assembly jigs and already installed firmware.
Having said all this, the project is not for the faint of heart, it is a lot of work. You aren't going to finish it in an evening or a week of evenings. I probably spent like a hundred hours building it and I have been doing projects like this for sixty years. I would hate for you to buy this and not finish it because you underestimated how much work it is.
The printed circuit boards are high quality, the only difficulty was one of the IC patterns is a smidge too wide so you have to tweak the socket legs a bit to get them in. Also, the 100uf electrolytic capacitors are too tall to install in the obvious way, you have to lay them down on the board; I messed this up and had to extend the legs of the caps that I cut off before realizing this.
Tools - you will need a good thermostatically controlled soldering iron, at least 60 watts with a very fine tip for the circuit boards; a slightly bigger tip as well can be useful to solder the larger bus wires. That iron you got in 4th grade and used to wood burn your Mother's Day project isn't going to cut it. You will need fairly small flux core solder, I use .031" and it works well. I used a substantial fraction of a 1 pound spool. If you use lead free solder, be sure your soldering iron can produce the temperature required. You will need a good quality small pair of diagonal cutters with a sharp tip, and a small pair of needle nose pliers.
When building the cube itself, be very careful to make good solder joints. Then inspect carefully. Then test each plane on the bench before assembling onto the circuit board. Then inspect and test again. If there are any soldering problems or LEDs that don't work, it will be extremely difficult to fix once the cube is assembled. The more time you spend inspecting and testing will be more than worth it.
My only criticism is that the LED grid jig arrived broken in many pieces, I spent a lot of time repairing it before I could start building. A bit more robust design, and/or better packing for shipping would make this easier. Also, the material has a paper protective layer that must be removed before assembling the jig or the pieces won't fit together. The little wood block jig works well, though the pins on mine were a bit rough and I smoothed them out to make removing a formed LED off the jig easier.
The processor comes pre-programmed with firmware that implements a bunch of cool color effects, but if you want to add your own you will need to download the Arduino development environment, and you will need a USB to serial board to talk to the processor and download your code.
Altogether an enjoyable and worthwhile project. Thank you Paulus!
