A bunch of us have made or are making nixie tube clocks so I thought I’d start this topic for people to post what they’re working on, or what they’ve built.
I have one of these tubes (IV-18A), so I’m currently researching what clock to build. Here’s one that someone made.
I find this build a little clunky. I’d like to make the actual board as small as possible. Adafruit used to do a nice slim board for the ice clock build but they’ve discontinued it.
am working on this too, just got a batch of PCBs for in12s back. 2 tubes per board with BCD driver. plan to hook it to arduino, needs 16 outputs, 4 per tube.
I used a tube pcb from github but i enlarged the holes (too big) as I did not know the size of the above pins. Plan to drive it with a SAMD21 board using the internal RTC.
The electronics were a kit that add a bunch of nice features like auto blanking, fancier transitions, and “cathode poisoning prevention” that periodically rolls all the tubes through all their digits.
The Nixies were from Ebay, IN-8s. The board is using a HV5812 High Voltage Driver IC to drive them.
the base is my design, CNC’d from walnut, with maple endcaps. (walnut block was slightly too small).
The edges aren’t super square, as I fucked up with the belt sander and didn’t want to do another full production. Finished it with danish oil.
I found the Adafruit ice clock files so I think I’ll put the board together and have it manufactured at oshpark. Let me know if anyone else is in. I’m still going to use the IV-18A tube as it’s what I have around.
I like this kit because of the way the clock is sealed inside acrylic. The high voltages do freak me out a little.
Just prodding @wander and @packetbob cause you have tubes. I see there are a bunch of shared project boards on oshpark for nixies. Let me know if you want any boards from there and I will add them to my order.
Janet, I spoke to Bob last week. We found a site with lots of nice stuff at decent prices. eg. the pcbs with tubes were only $US2 more than without. I’ll look up the link. Cheers, Tom
ps. I have spare PCBs for IN-12s. I plan to laser cut my own acrylic case.
I’ve been working on a VFD tube watch. I want to finally have something that helps with ADHD troubles so I’m building in an alarm and timers and stuff.
I already have a working prototype but my ADHD has been winning lately and I don’t have the main CPU programmed; only the display controller.
The awesome thing about my setup is that it takes about 60mA at 3v to display. I’m using high-side control with a simple transformer to couple and offset the heater. Also it’s very tiny (it’s three of the four boards between the battery on the right and the tube on the left)
