The Cube:Bit is a nifty 5x5x5 LED cube stack for use with various micros, including the Raspberry PI Zero.
This library builds on the work of libws281x and Máximo Cuadros' nifty Golang wrapper of the same to provide an API which more closes matches the 3D cube of the physical device.
While there's a bunch of support for using the Cube:Bit with the BBC MicroBit, I wasn't able to find much else for the Raspberry PI, so I knocked this up mainly just to play with it on the PI.
This is a video of what it looks like:
It's really just a string of WS281x NeoPixels formed into a cube shape, although cunningly the path the string takes is slightly unexpected:
The odd layers are laid out like so:
,-21--22--23--24--25 '-20--19--18--17--16, ,-11--12--13--14--15' '-10---9---8---7---6, 1---2---3---4---5'
and the even layers are laid out like this:
.__. .__.
21 20 11 10 1
22 19 12 9 2
23 18 13 8 3
24 17 14 7 4
25 16 15 6 5
'--' '---'
Still, that's easily dealt with.
Unfortunately the LEDs themselves seem not to have many levels of brightness available, so the types of effects you can make with it slightly limited, but it's still a brilliant bit of fun.
It's all a bit hacky and very much work-in-progress, but the bits that are there do something at least :)
There are some "demos" under the cmd directory, have a look at these to
see some usage examples.
The cubebit package provides a direct cube-like API for setting the colours
of the LEDs.
The renderer package is a simple layer which sits above cubebit and
provides a mechanism for rendering simple shapes into the LED space.
Fetch this repo:
export GOPATH=...
go get github.com/9600org/cubebit
# It'll complain about not finding -lws281x, so we need to build it:
cd ${GOPATH}/src/github.com/9600org/go-rpi-ws281x/vendor/rpi_ws281x
scons
Now we can build our code:
cd ${GOPATH}/src/github.com/9600org/cubebit
go build ./cmd/render
Now you can run it:
# Needs to be run as root for access to the hardware:
sudo ./render