I have decided to scale down the LED Cube to a 5x5x5 in order to test out the timing and construction. Unlike a lot of LED Cubes that can be found on the internet, I have not had a lot of free time to spend on this endeavor. Scaling down like this will enable me to at least build a cube with the parts that I have on hand. Then, as I have some spare time available to me I should be able to test it out fully. Besides, a 5x5x5 cube only involves soldering 125 LEDs together not the 512 LEDs associated with an 8x8x8 cube. Aesthetically, it would be more pleasing to have the 8x8x8 or even a 10x10x10 cube but I really don't have the time to devote to it. This is just for fun anyway. So a slight change to the connection diagram:
This reduces the MCP23017 count down to 6 or 7, well below the 8 maximum addresses for a single I2C bus. I will still attempt to do this through one or two Arduinos for control along separate I2C busses. This structure also means that I will be controlling the Arduinos on one I2C bus from the Raspberry Pi. So three small computers in the mix.
