To whom it may concernAbout 5-7 years ago, our family purchased a RGB LED Cube from the RobotShop. At that time my son assembled it and said it did not work. He has since graduated college and no longer around. In cleaning up the basement, I found this cube and since I have an electrical engineering degree, decided to take a closer look at it.I went thru the instructions and it seems to be assembled correctly but I can’t tell if the LEDs were inserted correctly as the leads were cut off (so don’t know which was was the longest). Anyway, I plugged it in and see that a light is lit on what I think is the Rainbowduino board. The same light illuminates whether I power the cube thru the DC plug on the Rainbowduino board or if I use the plug on the light cube base. That is the only illumination that occurs. Neither the RSSI or ASSOC LEDs light up nor do any of the 64 LEDs in the cubeI was wondering if there are some voltage measurements that you could suggest to help isolate where the problem is. I think I read the Rainbowduino board was optional and think this would get used when programming from a computer so if that’s the case, I should be able to remove it and still have the cube function (in some manner). When I remove the Rainbowduino and provide power directly to the Rainbow Cube base, there is still on functionalityWould appreciate and diagnostic support you can provide.Thanks very muchGlenn
Hi,
After confirmation that the Rainbow Cube is properly assembled, you can take a look at the Rainbowduino Wiki Page.
You will find instructions on how to program the Rainbowduino with a provided Arduino sample code to control the LEDs and test the functioning of the cube.
Normally, you can control the Raibow Cube with any microcontroller board but it is suggested from Seeedstudio to use the Rainbowduino board for simplicity.
You can also find further information on this Github page.
Hope this helps
Brahim
Thanks for the response but I guess I wasn’t clear with my original note. I don’t think the cube is assembled properly since there is no indication of any functionality. I’m looking for some help to help diagnose why it’s not working. I guess the first question is: when I connect power, what should be happening? I’m assuming some LED blinking like activity should be occurring but I’m not seeing any. Please help me understand what I should be seeing when I connect power and how to diagnose what the problem is as I’m not seeing any life.
Thanks much
Glenn
The cube shouldn’t display anything without the Rainbowduino (loaded with the appropriate Arduino code). Please follow this tutorial.
If after uploading the code, the cube still doesn’t display anything, you can try to desolder one or two Leds and test it separately to see if the Leds are working and if it’s soldered properly.
ok…when I follow the instructions above and try to compile, I get the following error message. Would appreciate any feedback you could provide to help determine the cause, and fix for this problem. Thanks
C:\Users\Glenn\AppData\Local\Temp\Temp1_Rainbowduino_for_Arduino1.0.zip\Rainbowduino\examples\Cube1\Cube1.ino:7:26: fatal error: Rainbowduino.h: No such file or directory
#include <Rainbowduino.h>
^
compilation terminated.
exit status 1
Error compiling for board Arduino Duemilanove or Diecimila.
Folks, these one line message that provide links that supposedly help ‘half educated’ customers are of no use. As far as I’m concerned, there are too many downloads, too many links and not enough personal attention being paid to help customers with problems. As far as I’m concerned, this is a hopeless cause and I’m throwing out my fully assembled RGB LED Cube because the software directions to get this thing to operate are atrocious. Probably wasted more time trying to get the thing to work then it took to assemble it. Suggest you make directions much, much easier so interested customers can get these projects to work. Thanks anyway
Hi Glenn, this LED cube is different than others on the market in that aside from having to solder it all correctly (frame and RGB LEDs oriented correctly), the sample code needs to be uploaded correctly to the driver board (no sample program installed). Uploading the code requires that you download and install the Arduino IDE software, then install the corresponding Rainbowduino Library, then open and upload the sample code to the board. The error you mentioned indicates that the library was not installed, or was not installed correctly. The library can be installed directly from the Arduino software and a link was provided explaining how to do so. Since this is not a RobotShop product (we had created a bundle which included all of the necessary components to get started), and the instructions are on the manufacturer’s site (as indicated), we are not in a position to edit the manual. There is quite a bit to read through in order to get it working, and it includes a lot of information in order to create custom code, but that’s the situation with a more DIY kit: wiki.seeedstudio.com/Rainbowduino_v3.0/
Tell us if you have any additional issues.