Planet Arduino

Rubik’s cubes have been mystifying and frustrating people for more than 40 years now. According to Forbes, 450 million Rubik’s cubes had been sold by 2020. But based on our very scientific estimates, only a small fraction of those have been solved. To avoid that difficulty, Stuart Gorman gave his Rubik’s cube chandelier the ability to unscramble itself.

This large 3D-printed chandelier looks exactly like the iconic cube, except that each section is lit by LEDs instead of covered with a sticker. Those are WS2812B individually-addressable RGB LEDs controlled by an Arduino Mega board. People usually choose the Mega when they need a lot of I/O pins, but in this case Gorman picked the Mega because it has lots of RAM to work with. That RAM is necessary for handling the complexity of the Arduino code that the lamp is running.

The lamp has a few different LED effects modes, which are selectable through a smartphone app that connects to the Arduino via a Bluetooth module. Static colors can be set to each face or it can flash random colors. But the exciting modes replicate traditional Rubik’s cube play. The first starts with a solved cube and then endlessly rotates random faces, like most people do when they attempt to solve a Rubik’s cube. The second mode will actually solve the cube, which it does by playing the first mode in reverse. This chandelier looks fantastic and is a lot of fun to watch in action.

The post Arduino-controlled Rubik’s cube chandelier solves itself appeared first on Arduino Blog.

Since its invention in 1974, Rubik’s cubes have been entertaining and frustrating those that choose to take on the challenge of aligning their shapes. More recently, however, people have been building algorithms and machinery to do it for them, including Mario Milanesio’s Arduino Rubik Solver, or ARS.

ARS, which was constructed with the help of Milanseio’s students, is comprised of several 3D-printed and laser-cut parts. The device utilizes a series of four stepper motors to rotate the cube, along with two more to pull the grippers back when needed. 

Solving is assisted by the ARS Studio software package, which lets users program in the existing color sequence. It then sends movement commands to an Arduino Uno over serial, which controls the motors via six A4988 Pololu drivers to complete the puzzle.

Rubik’s Cubes seem to have been most popular in the 1980s, but never really went away. As such, if you have one lying around your house unsolved, why not ‘simply’ construct a machine to do this for you? 

One possibility is the Q-Bot, outlined here. While it won’t break any world records, it’s a solid-looking assembly that appears to be relatively easy to build.

The Q-Bot features six NEMA 17 stepper motors, four of which turn one face at a time. When needed, the other two use timing belts to alternatively pull opposed stepper motor pairs back, allowing the other two to rotate the entire assembly. An Arduino Mega is utilized to control the steppers via a custom shield, with a computer running the Kociemba’s Algorithm.

[Matt] recently learned both how to solve a Rubik’s cube and the basics of an Arduino. Putting the two together, he decided to try his hand at making an automatic Rubik’s Cube solver!

We’ve seen this done quite a few times using LEGO Mindstorms, but we’re much more impressed with [Matt's] clever use of popsicle sticks and mechanical linkages…. The device uses just two servos. One to rotate the base, and the second to flip the cube over.

He’s using an Arduino UNO (R3) with 2 Hitec HS-311 hobby servos, some popsicle sticks, hot glue, a paper towel roll, and a bit of plywood. He wrote the code to solve the cube himself, and has shared it on GitHub — but he didn’t stop there and decided to create a GUI to go with it using Python.

It’s not that fast, but it’ll solve a cube in about 20 minutes — stick around after the break to see it in action!

[Matt] recently learned both how to solve a Rubik’s cube and the basics of an Arduino. Putting the two together, he decided to try his hand at making an automatic Rubik’s Cube solver!

We’ve seen this done quite a few times using LEGO Mindstorms, but we’re much more impressed with [Matt's] clever use of popsicle sticks and mechanical linkages…. The device uses just two servos. One to rotate the base, and the second to flip the cube over.

He’s using an Arduino UNO (R3) with 2 Hitec HS-311 hobby servos, some popsicle sticks, hot glue, a paper towel roll, and a bit of plywood. He wrote the code to solve the cube himself, and has shared it on GitHub — but he didn’t stop there and decided to create a GUI to go with it using Python.

It’s not that fast, but it’ll solve a cube in about 20 minutes — stick around after the break to see it in action!