I too am in the same situation except I have gone further and bricked my cube by trying to load one of the codes, 8x8x8.hex, from GitHub. Using the STC-ISP tool. Everything seemed to go well and according to the tool uploading was a success but all the cube did after was buzz from the speaker on the board. Also see all animations of this cubeon http://8x8x8item.com. LED Cube Simulation Software: I almost finished building my 8x8x8 LED cube and with it came this software for the PC! It helps you create animations and simulates them on a 2D screen before they get uploaded to the 3D one. There is no support (yet) for communicating through the. Below you’ll notice the cube doesn’t sync up with the music right away. That’s because the threshold value had been adjusted for the louder part of the song and the intro is a much lower amplitude initially. This “proof of concept” initially done on the Black Edition Classic board led to the 3.5A and eventually the 3.7A boards.

Believe it or not, [Anred Zynch] had no soldering skills before starting this project! What we’re looking at here is an 8x8x8 LED cube set up as a Space Invaders style game with a Playstation 1 controller.

I decided to replace the 24 shift registers, 192 transistors and 640 resistors with 12 DM13a LED drivers (about $1 US each on eBay). The cube itself was built as Kevin describes in the following video: How To RGB 8x8x8 LED CUBE - The BUILD! If playback doesn't begin shortly, try restarting your device.

He was inspired by several other cubes like [Chr's], and the Borg cube by [Das-Labour]. The project makes use of an Arduino Mega 2560 R3 to drive the 512-LED array, and an Arduino Uno to take care of the sound effects during game play. It’s kind of like Space Invaders — but in 3D!

Complexity of building and wiring it aside, [Anred] has provided great instructions and the code for the entire project, so if you’re looking to recreate it or something like it, you can! It’s also entered in an Instructable’s contest right now, so if you like it, we’re sure he’d appreciate the votes.

And showing off the cube’s effects:

Download 8x8x8 Led Cube Program Software Windows 10

Not enough LEDs for you? How about this massive 16x16x16 cube? Too many LEDs? Okay, how about this tiny 3x3x3 cube?

Filed under: Arduino HacksThe Software
The software for running a static program on the 8x8x8 is pretty darn complex. But for the most part it consists of two portions:
-LED Cube Updating via Interrupt

Led Cube 8x8x8

-Main Loop LED Scheme Execution
It's simply impossible to describe everything that the software is doing (thanks to CHR from instructables for writing this software!) in this project on a single webpage so I'll just skim over what I think are the most important parts. Starting with the LED updating algorithm. In order to keep the cube up to date, we need to be constantly updating each of the 8 layers to represent changes we might have made to how things should be lit up. To do that we keep specific timing using timer interrupts and constantly updating code.
LED Cube Updating via Interrupt

Once you have the LED updating scheme working you can start having fun. Back in the main loop you can now tell the cube which LEDs to light up and where and they'll do exactly that. If you look through the code you can see some unique programs and functions that CHR has written as examples of what the 8x8x8 cube can do:
Main Loop LED Scheme Execution

Download 8x8x8 Led Cube Program Software Full

8x8x8 Led Cube Kit

Anyway, the software is done and everyone is eager to see this thing in action so let's take a look at what it can do next in the results section, go go go!

8x8x8 Led Cube Diagram