ICS574 8x8x8 Cube

The monochrome cube is implemented using 8x 74HCT574, 74HCT138, 2x ULN2803A on an Arduino NANO following the instructions given at https://www.electronicshub.org/8x8x8-led-cube.

The cube is a modification of the original design with the UNL2803 transistor arrays replacing the discrete 2n222 transistors. The circuit schematic for this modified design is shown below.

Implementation Overview

The cube is refreshed using a timer interrupt routine which makes this in the 'set and forget' type of device. Note that the timer interrupt routine is implemented in AVR assembler and is not portable across architectures.

Data is buffered in an internal array and displayed by the time routine. The data buffer decouples the front end and back end of the application.