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Nixie Tubes (2015)
11–20 of 45 posts
Re: Nixie Tubes (2015)
#12[flagged]
Re: Nixie Tubes (2015)
#13There is still a small company building new tubes: https://www.daliborfarny.com/
They are very expensive.
Re: Nixie Tubes (2015)
#14I love how Petzold's Code went over the details of switching segments for a clock using these tubes.
Re: Nixie Tubes (2015)
#15I wanted a nixie clock and there are three options: 1) Build yourself, using second-hand tubes (typically 'new old stock' which means Soviet-era but unused) and your own PCB or a kit. Lots of these kits online, but be warned it involves high voltages, so not a good beginner project. IN-12 tubes are small and easy to find, larger tubes are more expensive. 2) Pay someone else to make a hand-made one - very expensive 3)…
I finally took a different path and did it with VFD. No high voltage, they're cheaper, and one could say VFDs and Nixies are family :p
I took the open source project Flora-ESP8266 [0] in the IV-22 size, changed a couple things in the BOM that weren't available, and ordered a bunch of pcbs. Now I have a bunch of extra PCBs that I could use to build extra clocks :-)
I would have loved to change the PCB to use an ESP32 instead, because that project uses ESP8285 (something like an 8266 but a bit more powerful) and those are harder to come by today.
0: https://github.com/mcer12/Flora-ESP8266Re: Nixie Tubes (2015)
#16I wanted a nixie clock and there are three options: 1) Build yourself, using second-hand tubes (typically 'new old stock' which means Soviet-era but unused) and your own PCB or a kit. Lots of these kits online, but be warned it involves high voltages, so not a good beginner project. IN-12 tubes are small and easy to find, larger tubes are more expensive. 2) Pay someone else to make a hand-made one - very expensive 3)…
I finally took a different path and did it with VFD. No high voltage, they're cheaper, and one could say VFDs and Nixies are family :p I took the open source project Flora-ESP8266 [0] in the IV-22 size, changed a couple things in the BOM that weren't available, and ordered a bunch of pcbs. Now I have a bunch of extra PCBs that I could use to build extra clocks :-) I would have loved to change the PCB to use an ESP32…
VFDs are also nice, but for decorative purposes I like more the sight of gas tubes with cathodic light, like Nixies, where you see the light being generated in an apparently empty space, instead of coming from inside a solid, like in VFDs, CRTs, LEDs, incandescent lamps or fluorescent lamps.
Re: Nixie Tubes (2015)
#17I wanted a nixie clock and there are three options: 1) Build yourself, using second-hand tubes (typically 'new old stock' which means Soviet-era but unused) and your own PCB or a kit. Lots of these kits online, but be warned it involves high voltages, so not a good beginner project. IN-12 tubes are small and easy to find, larger tubes are more expensive. 2) Pay someone else to make a hand-made one - very expensive 3)…
An additional point on 1): if you buy a DIY kit online, be prepared to get a package full of SMT chips, not ones that can be soldered by hand unless you have very stable hands. You'll need a reflow oven, heat gun, or some other way to get SMTs onto a PCB.
Re: Nixie Tubes (2015)
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
I finally took a different path and did it with VFD. No high voltage, they're cheaper, and one could say VFDs and Nixies are family :p I took the open source project Flora-ESP8266 [0] in the IV-22 size, changed a couple things in the BOM that weren't available, and ordered a bunch of pcbs. Now I have a bunch of extra PCBs that I could use to build extra clocks :-) I would have loved to change the PCB to use an ESP32…
VFDs are also nice, but for decorative purposes I like more the sight of gas tubes with cathodic light, like Nixies, where you see the light being generated in an apparently empty space, instead of coming from inside a solid, like in VFDs, CRTs, LEDs, incandescent lamps or fluorescent lamps.
Some VFDs do fit that bill
https://www.tube-tester.com/sites/nixie/different/futura/fut...
Re: Nixie Tubes (2015)
#19Re: Nixie Tubes (2015)
#20Does anyone know the significance of the letters for the symbol tubes?
> All symbols of Tesla ZM1047 (T S F N Z Y G H M X).
Are those letters particularly useful?