Development of remote-controlled animations on 3D LED cube

Abstract

Electromagnetism is an essential concept for for both scientists and engineers, especially electrical engineers. The design of antenna and electric magnet arises from this concept. However, it is found out that some students have a difficult time in grasping even the most fundamental concept of electromagnetism, such as electric force between two charges, direction of electric and magnetic field and the self-inducing nature of electromagnetic wave. Understanding those concepts require good visualization in 3-D, yet some students are simply weak in that visualization.

This project aims to design a mobile app, named Electromagnetic Simulator, that can aid the visualization of those concepts. With iPad as its basic platform, users can modify and rotate the view to grasp those concepts better. Moreover, users can also compute the electric field, electric potential and other variables quantitatively by using this app. In addition, a real 8x8x8 LED cube is introduced. By connecting the cube into PC and running a receiver program, the app can communicate with the cube and control the cube to display the same view as what the app shows. Both app and the cube hopefully will allow users to get a better understanding of this concept and help the development of future scientists and engineers.