8x8x8 Cube Theory & Persistence of Vision
We can't directly control all 512 LEDs in our LED Cube, it would take 8x more effort and a lot more power, so we fall back on an easier method that is using Persistence of Vision. This trick occurs when something appears roughly 50-60 times a second (or even more often) in the same location....when that happens our brains think that the object is permanently there. Tricky! So instead of controlling the 512 LEDs directly, we only control 64 at a time--but extremely fast, we can make it seem like we're actually controlling all 512 at the same time. That might make your head hurt, take a look at the gif animation below:
Slowly Controlling Each Layer
Speeding The Control Up
The animation above probably illustrates what I just tried to explain better than my words. But I'll give it a last shot: So, if our 8x8x8 LED cube has 64 LEDs on each 'layer' and there are 8 layers...if we tell each layer which LEDs are on and off fast enough, the entire LED cube will appear as though we are simultaneously controlling every LED.
We can't directly control all 512 LEDs in our LED Cube, it would take 8x more effort and a lot more power, so we fall back on an easier method that is using Persistence of Vision. This trick occurs when something appears roughly 50-60 times a second (or even more often) in the same location....when that happens our brains think that the object is permanently there. Tricky! So instead of controlling the 512 LEDs directly, we only control 64 at a time--but extremely fast, we can make it seem like we're actually controlling all 512 at the same time. That might make your head hurt, take a look at the gif animation below:
Speeding The Control Up
The animation above probably illustrates what I just tried to explain better than my words. But I'll give it a last shot: So, if our 8x8x8 LED cube has 64 LEDs on each 'layer' and there are 8 layers...if we tell each layer which LEDs are on and off fast enough, the entire LED cube will appear as though we are simultaneously controlling every LED.