About this project
L3D Cube: The 3D LED Cube from the Future
$252,678
689
Missed our Kickstarter project? The 3rd dimension lives on at www.L3DCube.com
Create and share beautiful 3D visualizations
Cubes interact with the world. And they love music.
Each L3D Cube comes with a built in microphone for easy music reactive applications. They can also be connected with other sensors for amazing interactions - use the Kinect, Structure, LEAP motion, or Makey Makey with your cube!
The world's first 3D LED Cube that's fun & easy to build
Download & share new apps directly to your cube on CubeTube with one click.
No programming needed!
All free!
Visualizations, music reactivity, more advanced interactions with multiple cubes or hacks with MaKay MaKey/Kinect/Structure/LEAP, it's all there. Download any programs, animations, & graphics with a click of a button wirelessly to your L3D Cube - no programming needed.
The CubeTube.org Beta is live! www.cubetube.org
And check out new creations in the works at the CubeTube Forum!
But what if I like to code/want to learn to code on the cube? Is it easy to control the cube?
OF COURSE YES, A MILLION TIMES YES! Come create wonderful things with us!
You can write programs in Arduino language ("Wiring") or the wonderful Processing. Then upload your code and completed apps to CubeTube for direct downloads to cube around the world! Here's how!
Powered by Spark for WiFi connectivity & arduino-compatibility. Create and share in 3D wirelessly.
Two sizes available
Five ways to use your L3D Cube
1. Plug it in, no setup! A standard set of visualizations will automatically start playing when you first plug in your cube. *NEW: you can control the visualizations by tilting your cube, thanks to the recently unlocked accelerometer in everyone's cubes!
2. Download new applications from CubeTube wirelessly to your cube with the click of a button.
3. Write your own programs for the cube in Arduino language or Processing. The programs can be stored in the cube's memory or can be streamed to your cube from a computer over your WiFi network. Alex just finished the definitive guide to programming in 3D in a cube.
4. Connect together multiple cubes and make them interact.
5. Hack it! Add your own sensors for new interactions or make improvements to your cube itself. Everything (hardware+software) is open-source and fully documented so hacking is fun!
Specifications
- Power: 5V 1A USB power can power most applications on your cube - so, this sucker can run off your computer, wall wart, or a battery pack. But for super intense visualizations, we've also included a 2A adapter. 100VAC - 220VAC input (you will need to supply your own prong adapter if outside the US)
- 512 WS2812B RGB LEDs for the 8x8x8 cube. 4096 WS2812B RGB LEDs for the 16x16x16 cube
- Laser-cut acrylic housing
- Assembly: Comes by default as a kit that takes around 30 minutes to assemble. No soldering required, just a Philips head screwdriver and the requisite assembly music (we recommend Journey for maximum cube assembly pleasure).
- You can pay $50 and we'll send you an assembled 8x8x8 kit. (+$250 for assembly service of the huge 16x16x16 cube. This also covers the extra shipping cost of this big boy)
- Comes with a microUSB cable
Open source inside and out
All of the hardware & software is completely open source under a Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 2.5 license.
Github Repos:
Cube firmware: https://github.com/enjrolas/L3D-Software
Cube hardware: https://github.com/enjrolas/L3D-Hardware
Processing library: https://github.com/enjrolas/L3D-library
Here's an Instructable on How to Draw Sweet 3D Graphics for LED cubes - there's even a cube simulator so you don't even have to wait for your cubes to get started.
And for the true cube-nerds out there, here's a play-by-play of the development of the L3D Cube, from Day 1 to the present, as the present catches up to the future. As it is wont to do.
Stretch Goal #1 UNLOCKED: Accelerometers
EVERY SINGLE L3D CUBE WE SHIP will come with a 3-axis accelerometer integrated into the base circuit board!
Now with an accelerometer in your cube, you could have: cube snow globes!, real-3D Marble Madness!, and joy-beyond-wide-eyed joy like you see in the animated gif above.
Thanks to the unlocking of this stretch goal, L3D Cubes now have TILT-CONTROLS:
Stretch Goal #2: Cube Arcade at $222K!
If we hit $222K by the end of this Kickstarter campaign, we'll unlock CUBE ARCADE!!! This will let all cubeheads play video games on your cube directly from any web browser, streaming wirelessly to your cube in 3D! More details in our recent update here:
Made by humans & robots!
Video above: A friendly pick-and-place machine is helping us save thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, perhaps billions of hours assembling the ever-critical surface-mount LEDs on our custom LED reeds.
New cube apps are being created and shared every day
A sound-reactive program for the REALLY BIG 16x16x16 cube, by Alex Hornstein
Technicolor Sine, by Alex Hornstein
Music Reactive Firedrop, hanging from the ceiling of a club in Providence, by Owen Trueblood
Wall Bounce Animation by John Vasquez
3D Snake by Ben Ledbury
Abduction by the Taipei Hackerspace
3D Game of Life by Bethany LaPenta
UltraCube by Alex Hornstein
Tortoise and the Hare by Peter Chestna
Zplasma, by Shawn Frayne
3D Pixel Art Magic Mushroom, by Sky at the Taipei Hackerspace
Noise Mirrored by Peter Chestna
Squarral, by Alex Hornstein
Assembly in 30 minutes, no soldering
Full assembly instructions here.
To the future!
-Shawn, Alex, and the Looking Glass team
Risks and challenges
Our team at Looking Glass has been in the invention business (first in cleantech, now in volumetric imaging) for nearly 10 years and we've experienced firsthand many of the delays that arise when bringing a new hardware technology to the world. We've been humbled on many occasions by the complexity of a hardware + software product like the L3D Cube.
That being said, we've already made dozens of cubes over the past few months, gone through seven full hardware revisions, tested cubes in the real world at half a dozen Maker Faires/festivals, and worked out nearly all of the hardware bugs and most of the software/WiFi bugs. We're still building the L3D Cube "click-to-download-to-cube" functionality on our new site, but we're confident that will be up by Christmas.
We usually beat the odds and ship on-time (we shipped a few days early for our last Kickstarter project) - but there's always a chance the geometry of spacetime changes and cubes are no longer allowed.
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Funding period
- (42 days)