Here is a 3D model of the upcoming 6 tube display board. It will accomodate 6 IN-12s or 8422 tubes. It will have blue LED back-lighting. It will have LEDs for colons. All components will be through-hole for easy assembly. It can be driven by either the nixie shield or the nixie driver board.
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There are a couple of new features -
I’ll be stuffing one up for test and handing it over to my assembler. Once I have a batch ready to sell, I’ll send out a notice. Watch this space. Will probably switch to black boards after this initial run.
Now for something that does not have to do with Nixie Tubes I ran into just one big problem; I ran out of memory; You can only cram so much functionality into 32kB of flash memory; In fact, I’ve been forced to create different releases of the software for the different types of clocks by “ifdef”ing out functionality of one model to make room for the functionality of another. To put it plainly, this sucked. I have some experience with Embedded Linux. And there’s no shortage of boards which are capable of running full-fledged Linux. I’ve had in the back of my mind the notion to design a board that could run Linux. Then there were shields. Over 200 and counting. Granted many are one-offs that aren’t for sale, but plenty of them are. It would make sense to leverage my Linux board by making it compatible with The Shield Standard; Such that it is; It is not much more than a mechanical definition and some minimal number of digital and analog I/O. Maybe some PWM and SPI or async serial. That’s about it. That’s OK. At least this is a starting point. Ok. Which Linux-capable processor should i use ? There’s also a dog’s breakfast of these. Most important: It must be cheap. And it should run full Linux. The Linux Board Support Package must exist. Schematics for reference designs must exist. The part that met all these requirements the best turned out to the same one that is used in the Chumby — The Freescale I.MX233. The Chumby people make all the code and documentation available. Plus, the part costs just $5 bucks in the USA quantity 100. Great !
Wind the clock forward a few months. Omit a ton of details. The first article is booting and running Linux. I am about to send the next spin of the board design out for fabrication:
A new version of the Nixie Driver board and Nixie clock firmware and documentation is now available. Highlights include:
Rev A and B Clocks and Driver boards purchasers prior to August 2011 will benefit from a Daylight Savings Time Bug fix which caused clocks to shift into and out of Daylight Savings Time under certain conditions. Details are available in the Firmware Version 1.4 Release Notes
I am putting the finishing touches on a nixie driver board that will plug into an Arduino. This board will allow hobbyists who are familiar with the very popular Arduino hardware and software platform to put nixie tubes in their projects. And as always, hardware and software will be 100% open-source. I will be selling the board in 2 versions; Assembled and bare. Users can supply their own IN17x7 nixies, or other model tubes via separate display boards.
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 WHAT WE DOCogwheel Circuit Works produces embedded electronic devices serving the electronics enthusiast, DIY, and Maker communities. Whenever possible, projects are released as open designs with no restrictions other than you must give us credit. 
Nixie tubes are essentially neon lights with 10 or more individual elements You can find out more by googling or visiting |
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I’ve been interested in Arduinos and the Maker Movement for sometime; This is why my Nixie Tube driver designs are based in part on the Arduino’s Atmega 328 processor; There are a dog’s breakfast of microcontrollers to choose from. But the ’328 stood out because of the wide acceptance of the Arduino; That would mean that the tools would be ubiquitous and there would far more resources available on the net.
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