Schlagwort: Nixie Clock

  • This beautiful clock features circuit sculpture faux Nixie tubes

    This beautiful clock features circuit sculpture faux Nixie tubes

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Everyone loves a nice Nixie tube clock, but Nixie tubes are expensive and difficult to find. Even if you can source a working set, driving the vintage tubes is a complicated undertaking by modern standards. Nixie tubes require high voltage and multiplexing, which is a pain. To solve these problems while retaining the aesthetic, 4Dcircuitry built this clock that utilizes freeform circuit faux Nixie tubes.

    Each of the “Nixie tubes” used in this project is actually made entirely with 1206 SMD (surface-mount device) LEDs. But instead of soldering those onto PCBs, 4Dcircuitry attached them to formed 0.8mm brass rods to create tiny circuit sculptures. Those plug into custom PCBs which arrange the circuit sculptures, each a single segment, in a horizontal stack. Glass tubes cover each stack, making them look like Nixie tubes when viewed from the front.

    An Arduino Nano board controls the LEDs. It doesn’t have enough pins for every segment, so the circuit uses shift registers. A DS3231 RTC (real-time clock) module provides accurate timekeeping. The base of the unit is a piece of wood milled on a CNC router, adding to the minimalist retro aesthetic. While it isn’t a requirement, 3D-printed jigs help to form the brass rods into the proper shapes, which would be difficult to do well entirely by hand.

    The post This beautiful clock features circuit sculpture faux Nixie tubes appeared first on Arduino Blog.

    Website: LINK

  • This shield combines the retro charm of Nixie tubes with modern Arduino Cloud connectivity

    This shield combines the retro charm of Nixie tubes with modern Arduino Cloud connectivity

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    Arduino Team — July 8th, 2021

    Nixie tubes are fun little devices that act like seven-segment display modules in that they can be lined up together in order to form a larger number by showing digits 0 through 9. One maker, Marcin Saj, has created a unique project that uses a series of six Nixie tubes that can show the current time, temperature, and humidity all within a compact footprint. It is also able to receive commands via the Arduino Cloud service and an Alexa skill, thus enabling users to toggle various functions on or off with a smart speaker or phone. 

    Saj’s IoT Nixie Clock Shield has an RGB backlight that can be easily adjusted via the Arduino Cloud’s RGB color picking tool, which allows for the device to match almost any environment. The built-in Nixie power supply is great as it lessens the chances of being shocked with 170V, and each tube is user-replaceable if it fails. The shield’s PCB has a header for plugging in an Arduino Uno, Nano, or Micro board, but it is best used with the Nano 33 IoT for cloud connectivity. The onboard DS3231 real-time clock module is able to keep the time accurately even when the power to the rest of the clock is removed.

    You can see more about this project, including its schematic and code, here on Saj’s product page. Also be sure to check out his demo video below!

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xngHxJeQn5s?feature=oembed&w=500&h=281]

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    Website: LINK

  • This Nixie tube clock keeps the time and the cost down

    This Nixie tube clock keeps the time and the cost down

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    Arduino Team — July 7th, 2021

    Nixie tubes are a great throwback to an era before the advent of LED and LCD screens; however, they often require expensive components or complex programming to operate. This challenge is what inspired Doug Domke to come up with his own solution that only costs $110. His design incorporates the Arduino MKR WiFi 1010, which has a powerful processor, ample amounts of storage, and WiFi connectivity along with a real-time clock.

    In order to keep component costs down, letting each 170-volt Nixie tube have its own binary-to-decimal decoder chip would have required a total of 24 pins on the Arduino which it does not have. So instead, Domke used a few resistors, transistors, and a multiplexer to route the high voltage signals from the MKR WiFi 1010’s GPIO pins to the display. There is, unfortunately, a drawback to this approach, as only a single Nixie tube can be lit up at any one moment. Therefore, the code loops through each tube rapidly and flickers it faster than the human eye can perceive, thus giving the appearance of a solid digit.

    After using the network time protocol (NTP) via the RTCZero library to set the time with incredible precision, Domke went about testing his project. As can be seen from his video below, the Nixie tube clock works great within its custom enclosure, and it will be exciting to see what new features will be added in the future. To read more about how this device was created, check out Domke’s write-up here.

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PGsbJrIPv8?feature=oembed&w=500&h=281]

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    Website: LINK

  • This pendulum POV clock uses a Nixie tube to plot the time as it swings

    This pendulum POV clock uses a Nixie tube to plot the time as it swings

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    Arduino Team — May 11th, 2021

    Clock pendulums are generally mechanical devices that time each second as it ticks away, but do little else. Jason Oeve’s concept, however, places the face itself – a single IN-12B Nixie tube – onto its large wooden pendulum. As it swings back and forth, four digits are progressively displayed on the tube for a unique timepiece.

    An Arduino Nano is the brains of the operation, along with an RTC module and an accelerometer that senses the pendulum’s position. When it’s straight up and down, an electromagnetic coil gives it a boost, keeping it ticking along “forever.”

    You can see it in action below and find more info on the project’s write-up.

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA7HUrH7MFA?feature=oembed&w=500&h=281]

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    Website: LINK

  • Retro Nixie tube lights get smart

    Retro Nixie tube lights get smart

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    Nixie tubes: these electronic devices, which can display numerals or other information using glow discharge, made their first appearance in 1955, and they remain popular today because of their cool, vintage aesthetic. Though lots of companies manufactured these items back in the day, the name ‘Nixie’ is said to derive from a Burroughs corporation’s device named NIX I, an abbreviation of ‘Numeric Indicator eXperimental No. 1’.

    We liked this recent project shared on reddit, where user farrp2011 used Raspberry Pi  to make his Nixie tube display smart enough to tell the time.

    A still from Farrp2011’s video shows he’s linked the bulb displays up to tell the time

    Farrp2011’s set-up comprises six Nixie tubes controlled by Raspberry Pi 3, along with eight SN74HC shift registers to turn the 60 transistors on and off that ground the pin for the digits to be displayed on the Nixie tubes. Sounds complicated? Well, that’s why farrp2011 is our favourite kind of DIY builder — they’ve put all the code for the project on GitHub.

    Tales of financial woe from users trying to source their own Nixie tubes litter the comments section on the reddit post, but farrp2011 says they were able to purchase the ones used in this project for about about $15 each on eBay. Here’s a closer look at the bulbs, courtesy of a previous post by farrp2011 sharing an earlier stage of project…

    Farrp2011 got started with one, then two Nixie bulbs before building up to six for the final project

    Digging through the comments, we learned that for the video, farrp2011 turned their house lights off to give the Nixie tubes a stronger glow. So the tubes are not as bright in real life as they appear. We also found out that the drop resistor is 22k, with 170V as the supply. Another comments section nugget we liked was the name of the voltage booster boards used for each bulb: “Pile o’Poo“.

    Upcoming improvements farrp201 has planned include displaying the date, temperature, and Bitcoin exchange rate, but more suggestions are welcome. They’re also going to add some more capacitors to help with a noise problem and remove the need for the tubes to be turned off before changing the display.

    And for extra nerd-points, we found this mesmerising video from Dalibor Farný showing the process of making Nixie tubes:

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxL4ElboiuA]

    Website: LINK

  • Geometric Nixie tube clock and environmental display

    Geometric Nixie tube clock and environmental display

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    Geometric Nixie tube clock and environmental display

    Arduino Team — May 21st, 2019

    Creators keep coming up with new clock designs, and while you might think that every new possibility has been exhausted, Christine Thompson has proved this assumption wrong once again with her “VFD Trilateral Clock.“

    This Arduino Uno-powered device employs a stepper motor to rotate a triangular prism shape with scales for hours and minutes on one side, temperature in Celsius and Fahrenheit on the other, and humidity and pressure on the third surface.

    The geometric scale travels in 120-degree steps, causing each face to line up with a pair of IN-13 Nixie tubes on either side. These linear tubes are then used to indicate time and environmental conditions in a beautiful bell jar display, as seen at around 3:30 in the video below.

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dlX5frGWoI?feature=oembed&w=500&h=281]

    While waiting for the delivery of parts for another project I decided to push ahead with this project. At its heart is two IN-13M Nixie tubes. These tubes are designed to provide a linear scale between maximum and minimum points using an illuminated column. The project uses two of these IN-13M, three wire Nixie tubes to show, time (Hours and Minutes), temperature (Celsius and Fahrenheit), Humidity (percentage), and Pressure (millibars).

    At this point I would like to thank Dr. Scott M. Baker for his great web site, which provided me with all the information I needed to get these Nixie tubes to work. In particular the Current Regulator as displayed and detailed on his web site.

    The project uses a BME280 sensor to determine the temperature, pressure and humidity and RTC clock to monitor time. As the system needs to display six different values it was necessary to construct a rotating central display which showed these values against six scales. In order to achieve this an equilateral triangle of wood was fashioned, each side showing two sets of values. A stepper motor was mounted under the top platform and this motor rotates through 120 degrees in time for the next set of values to be displayed on the two Nixie tubes.

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    Website: LINK