2. Arrival of Kit

Well, the kit arrived and consists of the following components:

 

About a million LEDs (well, okay 512*)

Two pre-assembled modules and a bag of components

A USB to Mini-USB Cable

The Printed Circuit Board

A Jig for Assembling the LED Panels

A Pre-Cut Transparent Case Kit

 

 

What was immediately obvious was that there were no instructions and no software.  However, the helpful eBay seller was very responsive and after a certain amount of messing around with websites and file formats I was able to download a ZIP file containing:

• 'Instructions' both in PDF and HTML format
• Software
• Demo files
• A USB Driver
• Other stuff I haven't had a chance to look at yet

 

Unfortunately the 'instructions' provided are an automated translation from a Chinese web page and contain very little information.  I know I'm going to have to make quite a few educated guesses about how this gadget works!

 

<UPDATE:  I have just found this article about how the cube works on the Internet - it's in Chinese but may be of some use>

 

So, I think the first job will be to look at the PCB and assemble that.  As previously mentioned it will require some surface mount soldering.  If you don't know what that's like then take a look at this excellent video by CuriousInventor.com:

 

 

More to come later...

 

 

*Actually, having made the kit we now know that they gave us around 20 extra LEDs just in case we damaged any - and in fact we did break one and bend two the wrong way so the extras were appreciated.