I thought I would have a go at making an LED cube.

I had some 4017 decade counters, so I was thinking about making a 10x10x10 RGB cube. From a numver of other LED cubes I've seen, the way that they do it is to provide power to all of the LEDs in every column that contains the LED to be lit, and then ground the plane containing the LEDs to be lit. If I wanted to have a 10x10x10 RGB cube, that would mean I would need 300 lines for the LED anodes, plus 10 for the cathods (assuming common-cathod LEDs).

It occurred to me that maybe you could do it another way; join all of the LED anodes together in a plane, and then ground each column. This way I would only need 30 lines for the anodes, plus 100 for the cathods.

I thought I would try a simple one first using this method; a 3x3x3 mono LED cube. I also thought I'd try some hardware that I haven't used before; an Arduino UNO.

3x3x3 Mono LED Cube