There are LED cubes, and then…there’s the MEGA-CUBE! PJRC forum member MaltWhiskey built a stunning 16x16x16 grid of PL9823 shift-register-programmable RGB LEDs, which thanks to some very clever techniques are able to run at an effective rate of 178 frames per second.

A custom PCB houses the Teensy 4.0 and required shift registers. 32 channels drive 128 LEDs each, for a total of 16x16x16 = 4,096. Only three pins on the Teensy are required, and thanks to FlexIO and DMA magic, no processor time is consumed by animation. In fact the Teensy is capable of a theoretical 1350 FPS, if not for the fact that the LEDs themselves wouldn’t be able to keep up. MaltWhiskey published a 20-minute video explaining how the cube was made using Fusion 360, KiCad, and of course, Teensy, as well as demonstrating some astonishingly impressive animations, which you can see below.