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A project log for Smallest 4x4x4 LED Cube Yet

New World Record 5mmx5mmx5mm...

morningstarMorning.Star 09/26/2018 at 22:584 Comments

Oops, I broke it in half again.

@salec commented that I was single-tentacly creating a new Moore's Law for LED Cubes.

Hehe, he has a point. Luckily though, with the next generation of 0201s thats as far as it goes. Its highly doubtful discretes will ever get any smaller and still be available to hackers...

First up, I managed to avoid the problems I was having with insulation by changing the wiring sequence. This was only possible by gluing the LEDs, although I think I can make a jig for that too, and go back to metal tape.

These LEDs are the same size as the legs of regular components. Very easy to make a castellated bar to wrap the wires on, all identical.

I ran out of red LEDs to complete a cube with, these really do not like to be messed with and die with little provocation. They are one-shot. So I switched to the blue, and printed out a motivational template.

The electronics measure 4.5mm, but its sat on a 5mm chip of plastic as a bearer.

26 pieces, 5x5.

I'm going to be doing these in my sleep soon.

Still 5mm, still cant believe I managed it..

I scratched my head trying to think of an easy way to cable these, and then remembered a piece of PATA EIDE cable. It has 80 cores in the space of 40, and they are solid copper. Perfect...

Gluing , stacking, stitching the layers together.

Testing... All still 100% perfect, I've been doing this every step to avoid finding a short when its too late.

Typically, the very last solder joint bridged. Maybe I was getting excited. Maybe its just a pain in the ass. I dunno, but this always happens. It wouldnt shift, and eventually the LED fell out. So I pulled the wires out straight, held the LED in tweezers and bravely soldered the anode to the crosswire and pushed it back, then folded the cathode wire back and beaded them.

One is now slightly conky, in the bottom back left corner. I know its there... OK so its 98.4375% perfect, dammit. ;-p

I found some series resistors and fitted a pin header for the Mega.

But unfortunately it wont program and I dont know why... I'll get to the bottom of it.

It still nearly works correctly. There's already a propeller sketch inside the Mega for the previous cube, but the wiring's different.


I got a bit of video, I'll  crack it tomorrow.

Kind of working. The software isnt yet, but thats still a record. :-D

Discussions

Gerben wrote 09/27/2018 at 17:59 point

"Oops, I broke it in half again."
Worlds smallest 4x4x2 cube? ;-p

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Morning.Star wrote 10/02/2018 at 21:39 point

Heheheh :-D
Sadly integrated wiring put a little too much strain in it, cranked out one of the LEDs and pulled the wiring and now it IS a 4 x 4 x 2. Lesson learned, back to circuit mounted, try again as soon as I can get some more LEDs.

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Dr. Cockroach wrote 09/27/2018 at 10:50 point

It reminds me of the flashy end of the "salt shaker" medical scanner in the first Star Trek series :-) Wonderful job and sure that there will be lots of applications :-)

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Morning.Star wrote 10/02/2018 at 21:40 point

:-D I'll not make any bones about that lol. Thank you dude.

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