Driving nixies

[William Lee]

Hi all-

I had a question on driving nixies using something other than 74141s.  Would any driver that can sink higher currents work ok?  Am I right in assuming I can use a driver that sinks with nixies because the cathodes are connected to ground when not floating?

For example, would this one work to use as a shift register?  I realize I won't need one for my current project that already has 74141s wired into the circuit, but was thinking ahead to building a clock from scratch.

"Add a bunch of high-power outputs to a microcontroller system with chainable shift registers. These chips take a serial input (SPI) of 1 byte (8 bits) and then output those digital bits onto 8 pins. You can chain them together so putting three in a row with the serial output of one plugged into the serial input of another to make 3 x 8 = 24 digital outputs. You can chain pretty much as many as you want. This makes it easy to control a lot of outputs like LEDs from only 3 digital microcontroller pins. 

This item contains one TPIC6B595 chip! These chips similarly to the more well known 7HC595s but they are high power drains, able to sink 150mA per pin."

https://www.adafruit.com/products/457 

As always thanks to the list for your advice and info.

-Dylan

[Spencer W]

I think from the datasheet, http://www.adafruit.com/datasheets/tpic6b595.pdf , it looks like the max is 50 volts. Good for vfd's. :) only my guess though

Sent from my iPhone

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[Dylan Distasio]

My bad, sorry I really should have checked the voltage before posting this!  

[Tony Adams]

Yes, the clamping voltage is a little too low - I've tried them. They
do work but a bit too much haze from the other cathodes. You might get
away with it using coloured tubes.

Tony.

On Feb 17, 1:21 am, Dylan Distasio <interz...@gmail.com> wrote:
> My bad, sorry I really should have checked the voltage before posting this!
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Feb 16, 2012 at 7:59 PM, Spencer W <upnxwoo...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > I think from the datasheet,

> >http://www.adafruit.com/datasheets/tpic6b595.pdf, it looks like the max

> > is 50 volts. Good for vfd's. :) only my guess though
>
> > Sent from my iPhone
>

> > On Feb 16, 2012, at 6:18 PM, William Lee <interz...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hi all-
>
> > I had a question on driving nixies using something other than 74141s.
> >  Would any driver that can sink higher currents work ok?  Am I right in
> > assuming I can use a driver that sinks with nixies because the cathodes are
> > connected to ground when not floating?
>
> > For example, would this one work to use as a shift register?  I realize I
> > won't need one for my current project that already has 74141s wired into
> > the circuit, but was thinking ahead to building a clock from scratch.
>
> > "Add a bunch of high-power outputs to a microcontroller system with
> > chainable shift registers. These chips take a serial input (SPI) of 1 byte
> > (8 bits) and then output those digital bits onto 8 pins. You can chain them
> > together so putting three in a row with the serial output of one plugged
> > into the serial input of another to make 3 x 8 = 24 digital outputs. You
> > can chain pretty much as many as you want. This makes it easy to control a
> > lot of outputs like LEDs from only 3 digital microcontroller pins.
>

> > This item contains *one TPIC6B595 chip*! These chips similarly to the

[David Forbes]

On 2/16/12 5:59 PM, Spencer W wrote:
> I think from the datasheet,
> http://www.adafruit.com/datasheets/tpic6b595.pdf , it looks like the max
> is 50 volts. Good for vfd's. :) only my guess though
>

Fifty volts is barely enough to work, but it works for at least B5870s.
That's what I use in my Nixie watch. It will excite the blue dot
phenomenon in IN-18s, though. I occasionally see a tube with a blue dot.

--
David Forbes, Tucson AZ