LED Cubes and How to Map Them @Raspberry_Pi #PiDay #RaspberryPi

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Last December, I attended the 34th Chaos Communication Congress in Leipzig, Germany. This is a large tech-conference with attendees bringing all kinds of awesome projects they have been working on.

One thing that really impressed me was a cube comprised of bright LED-panels.

It’s awesome and I just had to get one of my own.

I showed the video to some friends, telling them I wanted to build this. Sebastius and Boekenwuurm were as impressed as I was and wanted to join in on building one each.

And that’s how a new project was started! In this article, I’d like to tell a bit about how it works and how I programmed it.

The 6 panels used are P2.5 HUB75 LED-panels bought from AliExpress. They’re driven by a Raspberry Pi Model 3 Using a breakout board that support the interface these displays use.

The displays are connected in 3 chains, the maximum number of parallel chains the board supports, of 2 panels each. Having a higher degree of parallelization increases the refresh rate which in turn improves the overall image quality.

The first two chains make up the 4 sides. The remaining chain makes up the top and bottom of the cube.

The panels come attached to plastic frames which allows them to be assembled as a larger 2D display. These frames are too thick to assemble them in a tight cube. Fortunately, they are very easy to take off with a precise screwdriver.

Sebastius designed a custom frame using Inkscape for manufacturing using a laser cutter.

See full project breakdown here!


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