4x4x4 DotStar Cube on Glass PCBs
This DotStar cube from mosivers on Instructables is beautiful!
The inspiration for this project came from other tiny LED cubes like HariFun’s and that of nqtronix. Both of these projects use SMD LEDs to build a cube with really small dimensions, however, the individual LEDs are connected by wires. My idea was to instead mount the LEDs on a PCB, as intended for surface mount parts. This would also solve the problem of arranging the LEDs neatly in a matrix with same distances which can be often tricky when connecting them by wires. The obvious problem with PCBs is that they are opaque and therefore the individual layers would be hidden behind each other. Browsing through the web with this in mind, I stumbled upon CNLohr’s instructions on how to make clear glass PCBs. This is how I came up with the idea to make a small cube from SMD LEDs mounted on glass PCBs. Although it is not the world tiniest LED cube (this title probably still belongs to nqtronix), I think the glass PCBs add a nice new touch to the large variety of already existing LED cubes.