[Today’s run: about 1/4 mile]
Have I mentioned this yet?
I think I am finally getting started on a nixie tube clock. I have a schematic in hand and I have most of the parts.
Nixie tubes were used in many devices that needed a numerical display before LED and LCD displays came along.
Here is a picture of someone else’s nixie clock.
I want to have it run off of the 10 MHz feed from my GPSDO, so it will be very accurate. It will use GPS for the tick/tock but not actually use the GPS timing message to set the current time.
Nixie tubes are a vacuum tube technology. They come in different sizes. Inside the tube are multiple filaments. You apply a positive voltage to the Anode, then whichever Cathode you attach to ground will complete the circuit and make that filament glow. A 0-9 digit display therefore has at least 11 pins. Mine have 0-9 digits and two decimal points, one on the left and one on the right. I have 8 of these things in a circuit board which came out of an old frequency counter.
I dug out a DC voltage supply which I used to test these tubes and they work ok. The circuit board has more stuff on it than I need: the counter had rippling counter chips which I won’t use. I will study the board a bit more then saw off the part I don’t need.
I’ve been wanting to do one of these for a long time.