Just finished making one of these...

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Posted: Sun Mar 15, 2015 3:59 pm

Nixie Tube Clock

Similar the one in the video, but has a clear perspex case. The 'Nixie' tubes come from Russia (old cold war stocks from weapons display systems) found on ebay.com, and kits can be obtained from various suppliers. You have to solder all the components to the pcb and put the whole thing together yourself. Once all the old nixie stock has gone. That's it. No one is hardly going to make any more.

Posted: Sun Mar 15, 2015 4:07 pm

Here we go. This one is almost identical to mine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uv8PM29X6ws

Baiting Guru Joined: 31 Jan 2007 Posts: 12237

Very cool, I'm jealous!

Posted: Mon Mar 16, 2015 5:19 am

How beautiful! FINALLY, an excuse for my insomnia. I'd put it in my bedroom and happily never sleep again. Yay! Very Happy

Posted: Mon Mar 16, 2015 7:38 am

^ It has all sorts of settings that can be fiddled with. I set mine to switch off at night. Or it can be dimmed. The r/g/b LEDs underneath the tubes change colour to a chosen pre-set every hour, or can be turned off. Mine has a temp sensor as well which can display the temperature once a minute, every ten minutes or hourly.

^^ Tested my soldering skills PF. I occasionally weld as part of my job. But this required a bit more subtlety.

I bought the 6 nixie tubes off ebay for $210.00, a friend bought me the kit.

Posted: Mon Mar 16, 2015 2:26 pm

Very cool windypops.

So are you the person to go to if I need help building one of those aerosol potato launcher thingamajigs?

Posted: Mon Mar 16, 2015 2:57 pm

^Nah that's my side of the Street eh?

Posted: Mon Mar 16, 2015 3:31 pm

Get some lads to produce them, get a little production line running, doesn't you a penny so it's pure profit!

Baiting Guru Joined: 31 Jan 2007 Posts: 12237

@ Windy, Now you have me itching to build one. What wattage iron did you use? I'm a bit rusty with soldering as now everything is SMT.

I was thinking of using a Raspberry Pi as the controller and roll my own, sounds like a fun project. What are the voltage requirements of the Nixie tubes?

http://www.raspberrypi.org/

Posted: Tue Mar 17, 2015 8:53 am

^ Been thinking about a Pi as well. I learnt some BASIC on my ZX80 that I built myself:

If anyone is old enough to remember them. Smile

My soldering iron is just like this one: Generic Soldering Iron

They come with different names depending on where you are. I use it @ 300 deg, with a chisel tip. 0.7mm multicore solder and I like to use a flux pen to help flow.

If you buy a kit, some suppliers include the nixie (NIXIE is an abbreviation of Numeric Indicator eXperimental No. 1) tubes as well, but expect to pay a premium. The IN-18s are some of the biggest you can get. The digits are 40mm high. Expect to pay around $210.00 - $230.00 for six. If you go for a small er kit check out clocks with IN-14 or better still IN-8 tubes. They are about half the size of IN-18s. The IN-8 are considered better (thus more expensive) than IN-14s because they have a 'classic' 5. That's a bespoke 5. Whereas the 14s use a two upside down.

The tubes nearly all come from Russia and can take a long time to arrive due to a very bureaucratic post system. Expect two to three weeks. There are al sorts of different tubes some have the digits on the top of the tubes rather than longitudinal.

Like this:

Check this out as well: The Harwell Dekatron built as part of the UK's atomic research program. As far as I know, it's the only electronic computer that can count higher than 1. It counted to an impressive 10 using Dekatron tubes. They brought it back into use a few years back after finding the parts in storage.

*Edit to add* They need a 12v supply from a transformer plug. The tubes themselves draw up to 170v at peak power. Most kit suppliers sell the correct power supply units as well.

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