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CPE461/CPE462: Senior Project
=LED Stackable Cube Modules =

by Luis Castillo lacastil@calpoly.edu


 * Project Overview: **

This project idea emerged from a final project on CPE329 where an LED cube was used to display characters and animations. The original LED cube was interfaced with a PS/2 keyboard using the ATmega2560 microcontroller. During the manufacturing and implementation of the cube in CPE329, it was noticeable that a bigger cube would be better to display high detailed and higher resolution characters or images but the manufacturing process for bigger cubes becomes more difficult. To overcome this problem, a modular design approach could be applied, figure 1 below.

By creating several smaller LED cubes (4x4x4) and integrating them in a way that they can be stacked one over the other to create a bigger cube. The idea is to create several LED cubes that can be programmed to work independently from the other cubes and collaboratively to clone or expand what is being displayed on one cube to all of them.

This type of 3D LED displays have been a sensation for some time and several hundred videos of the 3D displays in action can be found online. This device can be used for several purposes ranging from artistic to commercial, but having a self contained smaller display unit as a building block to construct and drive bigger 3D displays made up of several small ones, as shown in figure 1. This modular design simplifies the construction of large display structures.




 *  Project Timeline: **

Figure 2 below shows a Gantt chart for the proposed timeline for design and implementation of this project.