My exploration with this kit and trouble shooting of my first project. For the diagrams- I have my attempt at understanding it (hard to understand the pre-printed board after it is soldered together) and then the official one I finally found.

This is based on the kit from Radio Shack. It does not include the necessary Arduino Uno.

 

First, make sure you have a lot of solder and some extra LEDs just incase, along with some small pliars for bending the LED leads. Also, the kit does not include, alligator clips, or extra wire for connecting the different rows in the cube.

 

To begin, you will need to start bending the leads for the LEDs and keep the positive and negative ends consistant.

The annode (positive lead) will need to be bent out at 90 degrees and then back down in another 90 degree angle.

The cathode (negative lead) will need to be bent away from the LED at 90 degrees.

 

When you look at the two leads they should be going in different directions, once again, a 90 degree difference.

 

Bend the leads appropriately for all 27 LEDs.

 

Then you will use the circuit board provided in the kit to help solder to leads together in rows of 3. Put the LED head down into the circles and make sure they are all conisistantly facing the same way. The cathodes should line up, almost overlapping. Solder these overlaps together.

 

Do this for all of the LEDs so you will have nine sets of three LEDS.

 

Now line up three lines of leds in head down in the circuit board and you will want to use some connection wire and lay it across the three lines of cathodes on either side of the middle row of LEDs.

Solder that connection wire to the cathodes.

 

Do this until you have three squares of nine LEDs.

 

This begins the tricky part. You will need to start soldering the remaining parts together and to the provided board.

 

Select what will become your bottom layer. the Front cathode lead will connect ot the G1 spot. Trim the other two cathode leads off and save the wire.

Make sure your annode leads line up in the appropriate places on the board and the cathode to the G1 spot. Solder that together.

 

Flip the board upside down and trim the extra from the G1, leave a little bit incase you need to resolder later. You can clean it up more after you finish.

 

Next select your second layer. you will need to connect the middle cathode lead to the G2 space and the annodes from this new layer need to be soldered to the annodes of the first layer. You may need to use Aligator clips to hold it together during this process.

 

Trim the other two cathode leads off. If the middle cathode lead is not long enough use the excess wire you trimed from the first layer cathode lead. (or your connecting wire if it is small enough).

 

Now it is time for the last layer. it will be the same process, but this time you will need the last cathode lead to be soldered into G3.

 

Once this is all soldered together, make sure the connections are reasonably solid and won't break.

Flip the board over and trim the excess wire.

Now it is time to start soldering the resistors into place. The areas for this are marked R1-R9.

 

Bend the two leads down on either side of the resistor and poke them through the appropriate holes in the board. Solder into place and trim the excess wire on the other side.

 

Personally, I waited until everything was soldered together on the entire board to apply the sticker, though the factory directions tell you to apply it now.

 

Now you will need to solder into place the Pin  Headers. The shorter ends go through the board and the longer will attach to your Arduino Uno.

 

These will only fit into one place so you won't have to worry about them being in the wrong spot. The most you will need to be careful with is that they are not crooked.

 

Solder into place from the top.

 

Now everything should be connected. This is when I applied the back sticker (it will prevent it from being interfered with by accidental connections).

 

Attach to your Arduino.

 

Now will be the time that you will want to go onto the website to download the code (I will provide it here as well)

http://blog.radioshack.fom/2013/03/radioshack-led-cube-offers-a-fun-challenge/

My guess is the marketing team decided the name of that one...

Once you upload the code to your arduino, you will be able to tell if you have done anything really wrong.

 

For me, there was a solder connection that was not working and affected a single LED. I was unable to determine the bad solder and found that attaching additional wire between the LED and another on the same layer.

 

I tested this by using some solder wire to try and add a connection  (without actually soldering) to see what would work. If you do this while the code is running then it will help you figure out the best way to patch it.

 

If you need to fix any solder, unplug it just in case.

 

Now if everything is working well, you get to play with the code or the housing for your project! Add a battery pack so that you can have a stand alone project that doesn't rely on your computer!