Nixie Clock

I think I'm going to make a Nixie clock. I've been teaching myself the Arduino flavor of C, and I've always thought these things were awesome looking. I ordered a set of 6 IN-14s off eBay from Ukraine, but I haven't done anything with them yet.

I'm thinking about using an LED under each number to give it a nice contrasting glow, kind of like this:

Anyone ever done one of these before?

I've always wondered what those tubes were called.

That's pretty awesome though.

I haven't but a friend of mine has. They are very nice conversation pieces. The newer kits have some particularly fun programmable tweaks (like refreshing and scrambling the numbers, etc.).

Yeah, I'm really wanting to DIY as much of this as possible, but the whole 170 VDC thing makes it somewhat irritating.

I'd like to have it talking to an atomic clock, or something else novel. Not sure what information I could display with 6 digits.

The following is copy-pasta from said friend:

so yeah, the thing is, he wants to do it more involved than I ever have :) I’ve only ever built kits from pvelectronics.co.uk, but they have a very nice kit that makes use of the tubes he bought http://www.pvelectronics.co.uk/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=21&products_id=79

each tube goes on a little daughterboard so they are swappable and replaceable

and it’s compatible with this case http://www.pvelectronics.co.uk/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=3_13&products_id=91

and these radio/gps receivers http://www.pvelectronics.co.uk/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=9

that kit comes with tricolor LEDs to go under the tubes, and they are configurable per hour for RGB combos or fading colors

same kit, slightly different tubes

earlier kit without the daughterboards https://www.flickr.com/photos/clockspot/sets/72157629428554358/

My friend really likes clocks.

He also said:

the directions and wiring diagrams are freely available on the PV Electronics site … if he’s worried about EE but likes the idea of programming it himself, he could get a kit and substitute his own programmed IC

as long as the IC pinouts correspond to the stated ones on the drawing

Working on one myself. Deliberately not looking too closely at kits/plans by other peole as half the point for me is figuring this stuff out.

Have a single digit working on the breadboard, where I can feed in serial data and get whatever digit I want. After this tese, I got the final circuit laid out, but need to create a few custom footprints before getting the boards themselves made.

Not sure if this link will actually work, but FB is the only place I currently have the video online. If it fails, I'll host it somewhere else tomorrow.

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10153034447364210&set=vb.564559209&type=3&theater

unevolved wrote: Yeah, I'm really wanting to DIY as much of this as possible, but the whole 170 VDC thing makes it somewhat irritating. I'd like to have it talking to an atomic clock, or something else novel. Not sure what information I could display with 6 digits.

A boost converter to get the volts up isn't that tough, but since I wanted to figure out one part at a time, I started with a prebuilt one:

http://www.kosbo.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=107&Itemid=79

Have my own version powering it now, but that got me going on the rest first.

Third time's the charm...

unevolved: If you want some K1551D driver chips, email me your address (gmail address, same username as here) I'll send you 7-8 free of charge. That gives you 6 digits, plus an extra pair to play with.

Kylini- Thanks for the advice. I found those guys, looks pretty cool.

Keethrax, that's awesome! Looks like you and I are on the same page. I'll send you an email with my address. I appreciate it.

Went ahead and dropped $13 on some PCBs from the UK for connector breakouts:

Should make mounting a little easier, and I can 3D print some brackets to screw them in place.

http://www.pvelectronics.co.uk/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=4_11&products_id=75&zenid=d8811b2e1ce71dacf100a3ae9ad8da0c

I'm something of an electronics geek and I hadn't heard of these. Interesting.

Yeah, I've learned since college I'm more of an electronics geek than I thought. I really enjoy this stuff.

Now, the big question. Arduino or RPi?

unevolved wrote: Went ahead and dropped $13 on some PCBs from the UK for connector breakouts: Should make mounting a little easier, and I can 3D print some brackets to screw them in place. http://www.pvelectronics.co.uk/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=4_11&products_id=75&zenid=d8811b2e1ce71dacf100a3ae9ad8da0c

At a minimum that will make playing with one in a breadboard easier.

Tip: To get all the leads through those holes, clip them to very slightly different lengths, getting progressively shorter. Then you just put one through at a time. Not impossible to do it without trimming, but it makes it way, way easier.

I've wanted to use Nixie tubes at some point to get a set of digital gauges in the Dart with a 1960s flavor instead of 1980s. It's interesting to see there are so many things out there now to support hobby use of them.

I think there's a lot of potentially awesome electronics projects that could compliment all the automotive projects on here. I wonder if we could get the forum overlords to give us some [CODE] tags with a monospaced font to allow us to share code easier?

My current plan is boards with two digits each that you can daisy chain together. Each board has one serial to parallel feeding two of the decoder/drivers (each controlling a single tube).

At six digits to start with it will be a clock/weather station display.

Unevolved: Have your chips packaged up, but it's currently -18 degrees making me less happy about walking to the post office this morning. Will drop them off by car at the end of the work day.

Awesome, thanks man. No rush, I really appreciate it.

Interesting. I might have to cobble one together in spare time at work.

unevolved wrote: Yeah, I've learned since college I'm more of an electronics geek than I thought. I really enjoy this stuff. Now, the big question. Arduino or RPi?

Why not both?

I got a Pi for the kids for Christmas. Other than play with a little Python, we haven't done much with it. Yet!

1988RedT2 wrote:

unevolved wrote: Yeah, I've learned since college I'm more of an electronics geek than I thought. I really enjoy this stuff. Now, the big question. Arduino or RPi?

Why not both? I got a Pi for the kids for Christmas. Other than play with a little Python, we haven't done much with it. Yet!

Currently running mine of a Texas Instruments Launchpad dev board. Blew up my Pi a while back, waiting to the new ones to become more available before replacing it. Am going to control the real thing with a pi or similar because it's not just going to be a clock, and remotely accessing it and changing the code seems like it will be handy.

I like the higher amount of IO on the Pi, but it seems overkill with what little I plan to do besides clock, and maybe date.

I really want to make one of these but I have so many other projects on the bench first. I like the idea of constrating leds. Good luck and post lots of pics!

Shouldn't you be able to give it an internet connection and use it to update the time for you?

moparman76_69 wrote: Shouldn't you be able to give it an internet connection and use it to update the time for you?

That's definitely one option.