I jhave been thinking about building one of these for a while now. Has anyone on here got one or built one? Any tips or interesting projects to do with them?
I would love to hand fabricate a case with very industrial switches for the on/off and lights and have these on top or the side of the case for things like temperature readouts and uptime. Just a completely industrial case.
Im actually working building one now for my steampunk case. i have had a look at many kits ands circuits and so on, the best way to make a nixie clock that can do things other than being a just a clock is to use an Arduino with the AdruiNix control shield. then you can make a nixie anything, http://arduinix.com/
The Ardunix is also by far and large the cheapest way to do this. you will have to have some budget to back this though, you are looking at 80 to 120 US dollars to build a nixie clock, even using the arduino version. i have spent about $80 so far, but still need a few more things
I really like tubes, and another fun thing to make is a device called a Dekatron spinner. these are awesome. check it out http://www.tube-tester.com/sites/nixie/datdekat/A101/A101.htm
The adruiNix site has all the info you could possibly need to make a working Nixie clock with up to 6 tubes. i bought the PCB from them in December, so i can vouch for the site.
Good luck
Thanks this is exactly what I was looking for. I have not started yet only looking see if I could entertain the idea. Thanks for the links and info on the ArduiNix stuff. I was aware of the Price to some extent I figured it would end up at this sort of level.
Thanks again.
No problem man.
I live in South Africa and with the current Exchange rate this project is getting expensive fast. i can also make some suggestions to help you save some cash.
I suggest buying the PCB from Adrunix and getting the components locally. the Nixie driver ICs are the only ones that are hard to get. try to win some on auction on Ebay. i got 6 for $10.
As for tubes, IN-18s are the biggest and nicest but they are ridiculously expensive (same tubes as in the Pic you posted). i suggest going for IN-12 A or B tubes. they have solid pins and you can buy special sockets for them, making mounting easy. IN-12s also seem to be the best tubes for the least money. if you want to make a really small Nixie clock then you want the B5750 tubes. B5750s have flexible pins and can be hard to mount and the pins can break if you fiddle with them to much
Again for tubes, Ebay auctions are the way to go. i have bought all my tubes from eastern Europe and Russia.
Good luck
This massive bakelite enthusiast built a few recently. Here's one of his presentation videos:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYKFCDRQZfo
Maybe you could get in touch and share some ideas.
Edit: Oh yeah... And it's portable.
That pretty cool. Thanks for the video.
Although this is a fairy old thread, but thanks for bringing it back up I had sort of forgotten about how much i loved these things. All my ideas are coming back now.
I've always loved these but didn't know what they were called. Think I'm going to order one of these and make a wood case for it.
http://www.pvelectronics.co.uk/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=140
