Hey guys,
I got myself a 5x5x5 Cube:Bit (the cube with all the little lights) plus base and hooked it up to my Pi, it worked fine as long as I kept the brightness down (at the default value of 40), but when I tried to set it higher the lights would start flickering as soon as too many were on at a time. Makes sense, the Pi power adapter can’t supply enough juice, fair enough.
So I bought myself a standalone 5V/6A power adapter for the Cube and hooked it up to the base, and that indeed allowed me to have more lights on and at a higher brightness level too. I tried turning the entire cube white (maximum light) at brightness 100 and it worked fine and looked very bright indeed.
Then I had the “bright” idea to find out exactly how much light the Cube can give off. So I changed the brightness in the create function to its maximum value (255) and turned all the lights on again. This was really too bright indeed, but to my shock there was also a little but of smoke and odor coming off part of the cube! (I think around the second layer.) I immediately turned it off and the smoking stopped. After waiting a few minutes I tried it again at brightness 100, and it still seemed to work, all the lights still came on and there was no more smoke or other strange things happening. It’s been a few days since that happened and everything still works normal, at brightness 100 or less. I haven’t tried a higher level anymore.
So my question is, does anybody have an idea what happened, why was there smoke? Did I damage my Cube:Bit somehow?? Is it not safe to turn the brightness up too high? Does anybody know what the maximum ‘safe’ level is, 100, 150, 200? (Safe as in nothing will overheat or break down I mean, I already know I shouldn’t look at the lights from close by at high brightness.)
Sorry if this is a bit of a silly question but I don’t really know too much about electronics, I’m more of a software guy, haha. Thanks for any replies.
Marty K.