My final project idead is an LED cube. I plan to make it 5x5x5. I will use single color 5mm LEDs to build the cube, although if time allows I am interested in using RGB LEDs for a more interesting lighting effect. The cube will sit inside a clear acrylic housing ontop of a 3d printed base plate. The circuitry will be hidden away inside of the base plate.

     In order to control this cube I need to address 25 anode leads and 5 cathode leads(one for each layer of the cube). I am going to mill a circuit board will a Roland Mini Mill that uses an ATmega168 or similar AVR microprocessor. For now I think the anodes will connect directly to the output pins of the microcontroller and the cathodes will be connected to NPN transistors controlled by output pins.

     When I was working on the LED cube model in Solidworks I found this funny perspective. It is kinda like a mind twister. Which way is the cube facing, is it flat or 3d?

     Here is a video of a small LED cube I made. Although I really enjoyed building it and watching it I did not feel it was going to make for a great final project. I did not want to spend weeks soldering all of the LEDs together and felt that I would spend way more time doing software to make cool lighting effect than I would like to.

     I am abandoning this project idea for two reasons. Firstly, I do not want to spend all of my time for my final project writing software and soldering LEDs and secondly, I do not feel that it meets all of the project requirement because it only would use the mini mill and possibly the laser cutter.