Obligatory shout out for the Techmoan Youtube channel, he loves these things and has had a bit of quest over the years [1] for new and interesting ones (and lesser alternatives). All of his latest ones come via a Ukrainian company, Millclock [2].
Nixie Tubes (2015)
31–40 of 45 posts
Re: Nixie Tubes (2015)
#32There are very active technical discussions of nixies going on here
Re: Nixie Tubes (2015)
#33[deleted]
Re: Nixie Tubes (2015)
#34Technology Connections' Alex has a great video on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGT1EvmDJh4
Re: Nixie Tubes (2015)
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
True, this IV-22 modules, that are individual digits, look a bit more like a Nixie than the classic flat VFD display of an old CD player or a vending machine (of course, not the same):
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mcer12/Flora-ESP8266/main/...
My idea is also painting the interior of the clock with a super matte black paint (Black 3.0 from Culture Hustle) so it looks a bit more like if the numbers were floating there...
Re: Nixie Tubes (2015)
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I disagree. Most SMD components are perfectly fine to solder by hand. Using a good soldering station with a knife cartridge makes the job much easier. Same with a microscope, but I home I use a headband with magnifying glasses. It does of course take some more practice than through hole components and in many cases it's easier to solder them in an oven, but then you need solder paste and preferably a stencil. The onl…
Yep, I discovered late than SMD parts were way easier to solder than I expected. Sometimes even easier and faster than thru-hole components if they aren't too small, as you don't have to be flipping the board back and forth all the time.
I just bought a couple of super cheap SMD soldering learning kits from AliExpress and spent an afternoon or two practicing. They are just 1 or 2 dollars each.
Those kits are just a small PCB with a bunch of SMD resistors and stuff you can solder. When you finish you can measure the resistance of the whole circuit to check if you've soldered them all properly or you've shorted or killed any of the components. Some of them have also a couple SOP and QFP footprint chips or even some LEDs on a functioning circuit, so you can power it later and see if it works.
Edit: Corrected QFN for QFP
Re: Nixie Tubes (2015)
#37Iconic time clock used in the time-travel anime 'Steins;Gate'. Wikipedia says it is "considered one of the best anime series of all time by critics and fans alike.". [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steins;Gate_(TV_series) ]
[dead]
Re: Nixie Tubes (2015)
#38Just to offer a potentially interesting anecdotal data point (or depending on your interpretation, three data points) I have had three IN-18 tubes running pretty much 24/7 on the same three digits since 2008.
My friends and I put it together in a box as a street address sign. It contains the minimum viable circuitry; there's no logic or surge protection of any kind. It lives plugged into an AC outlet and glows 342 from my bookshelf.
It looks awesome. IN-18 tubes are one of the biggest available. If you're going to use Nixie Tubes, my $0.02 is that you should always go for the most impressive ones available because you only live once.
The location is long gone, but every passing year I am more impressed with the longevity of these tubes. If there's a takeaway from this story, it's that in my lived experience, cycling the digits to increase longevity is almost certainly more mythology than necessity.
Re: Nixie Tubes (2015)
#39Just to offer a potentially interesting anecdotal data point (or depending on your interpretation, three data points) I have had three IN-18 tubes running pretty much 24/7 on the same three digits since 2008. My friends and I put it together in a box as a street address sign. It contains the minimum viable circuitry; there's no logic or surge protection of any kind. It lives plugged into an AC outlet and glows 342 fr…
Agreed. I bought a set of IN-18s for 30USD each back in 2009, now they go for over $100.
I finally designed and built a clock for them about 3 years ago, and it sits right under my main monitor. They are captivating. I added “tasteful” (IMHO) digit cycling effects and a PIR sensor to turn off the display when no one is around to prolong the lifetime of the tubes, but your experience with the longevity of your IN-18s is remarkable.
I’ve always wondered what equipment they were originally designed for, given their size. Most likely military I imagine, or maybe public signage?
Re: Nixie Tubes (2015)
#40I 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…
Numitrons are another option; they only require 5V to light the segments. They have a very strange, almost steampunk aesthetic (though Technology Connections is not a fan…) Unlike Nixies or VFDs, they emit a broad spectrum of light, so you can put any color filter you like in front of them (red, green, blue)
I made an alarm clock from some unusual Soviet 9-segment Numitrons a while ago. The code/design is in GitHub as well as a link to a video. https://github.com/74hc595/Numitron-Clock