Design my own Nixie Clock?

[Sean]

First of all, I have no experience in circuit design, electronics, or programming.  Is it ridiculous to design and make my own Nixie clock?  Maybe...But that's not going to stop me from trying.  But I wouldn't say no to some helpful guidance or friendly advice!

So...Where should I start?  I picked up "The Art of Electronics" to teach myself a thing or two about electronics and circuit components.  But looking around at other people's clocks I see a lot about microcontrollers, drivers, 555 Timers, etc.  I'm pretty good at teaching myself all sorts of things but I feel like I need a push in the right direction.  What are the basics I need to get started?  Are there any tutorials/guides?  Any good examples that I can study?  I tried doing a Google search and I find a bunch of different clocks, made by different people all over the world, but very little details about what goes into the process.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Sean

[Adam Jacobs]

Hi Sean,
If it was me, I'd probably start with the designs that don't use a
microcontroller. There are lots of all-logic designs out there, here is
the famous one:
http://www.electricstuff.co.uk/nixclock.html

Start out by studying existing circuit designs. Also, you might want to
invest in a copy of the "TTL Cookbook".. and maybe the "CMOS Cookbook".

-Adam

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[Spencer W]

My first project was an arduino and nixie clock. It uses 74hc595 shift registers and the shiftout library

Sent from my iPhone

[threeneurons]

First of all, I have no experience in circuit design, electronics, or programming.  ...

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Sean

I'm with Adam. If this is your first time out of the gate, go for the discrete  logic design. That is using 7400 series TTL, or 4000 series CMOS logic parts. Or the mix of the two. If you run them at 5V, then you can mix them together. Get copies of the TTL and CMOS Cookbooks, as mentioned before. They're great starter books. Here's an example of a 4000 CMOS logic clock:

http://threeneurons.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/nixie6c_sch.gif

Its from a kit I sell, but its on the web, so use it, if you want. It does mix TTL and CMOS. Most is CMOS, but the nixie drivers are TTL (Russian equivalent of 74141s). It includes a dekatron pendulum circuit, but I'd omit that, unless you want the extra complication. That part of the circuit includes the "charge pump", U11 (4013) and the circuitry right of U11.

I'd hold off on the Arduino, for now. It involves learning programming. You've got enough on your plate, for this pass. Maybe on your 2nd project, you may want to try a microcontroller. Then, an Arduino, is a great way to break into it. But, for now, one step at a time. I'd even avoid making your own HV switching supply, for now. Make that another project, for another day.

[John Rehwinkel]

> First of all, I have no experience in circuit design, electronics, or programming. Is it ridiculous to design and make my own Nixie clock? Maybe...But that's not going to stop me from trying. But I wouldn't say no to some helpful guidance or friendly advice!

> So...Where should I start? I picked up "The Art of Electronics" to teach myself a thing or two about electronics and circuit components. But looking around at other people's clocks I see a lot about microcontrollers, drivers, 555 Timers, etc.

You've put your finger on one dividing line right there. The two main approaches to nixie clocks are wired logic and microcontroller-based.

The difference is in how the clock behaviour is defined. With a logic clock, the behaviour is defined by the chips you choose and how you
hook them together. With a microcontroller, the behaviour is defined by a program that describes what to do. The choice is up to you -
it's quite possible for a beginner to build a working clock with either approach.

However, I'd suggest building your clock a bit at a time. Maybe get a solderless breadboard, a bunch of LEDs, a 74141 decoder/driver chip,
some resistors, and make, scrounge, or buy a 5 volt power supply. Hook the LEDs to the outputs of the 74141 and try hooking the inputs
to 5 volts and ground in various combinations. The chip will light different LEDs for different inputs. This chip is designed to drive a nixie
tube, but it will drive LEDs too, it just "sinks" voltage on one of its outputs to turn it on.

I suggest starting with something like this for two reasons. One is to get a feel for working with electronics, an other is the appeal of
short-term gratification. There's a third one too - you can make mistakes with this lashup without frying anything expensive, or running
the danger of shocking yourself with a high voltage nixie power supply. If you burn up a LED or 74141, no big deal, they're cheap and common,
and you'll have learned something that you'll tend to remember.

What you do next depends on what you'd like to do next. There are two likely directions. One is to obtain a nixie tube and high voltage power supply
and replace the LEDs with the nixie. Then you can control nixie digits instead of LEDs. The other way is to get something like a counter chip (if you
like the logic approach) or a microcontroller of some sort (if you prefer that route), and use that to drive your 74141 instead of manually switching the
inputs. And so forth.

> I'm pretty good at teaching myself all sorts of things but I feel like I need a push in the right direction. What are the basics I need to get started?

Hopefully I've shed some light above. In fact, the above reminds me of another how-to-get-started writeup I did a while back, let's see if I can
find that one. Yup, here it is:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/neonixie-l/nui9pdWbDNI/v8HnMNRQVnoJ

> Are there any tutorials/guides? Any good examples that I can study?

There's lots of information out there, look at older traffic on this list, and especially, go look at the group files archive on our old Yahoo host:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEONIXIE-L/files/

You'll probably have to sign up on Yahoo to access them, but there's a wealth of information there provided by group members on their own projects.

Finally, you'll find all sorts of help, advice, and encouragement available on this group - the people here are knowledgable and friendly. I skimmed over
quite a lot of details in the brief advice above, feel free to ask questions on anything you want to know more about.

- John

[Sean]

All,

Thanks for the great advice! You guys have given me a LOT to chew on. I'll check back once I've learned a bit more.

John - the yahoo group is "closed." Is anyone still approving new membership requests?

[Sean]

I went ahead and requested membership to the old yahoo group.  Membership pending.  Are the yahoo group files stored anywhere else?

[chuck richards]

A couple of years ago just for fun I started from
scratch and designed a nixie clock circuit from the
ground up (pun intended), that uses (6) 74HC160 counters.

The ic count is 17 packages for a plain 24-hour only clock.
The package count goes to 18 for a 12/24 hour selectable version.

It sets using thumbwheel switches and a push button.

I know that to all of you guys out there who use processors
that this seems elementary. However, even so, I am still
rather pleased with the '160 clock.

Chuck Richards

>
>
>---- Original Message ----
>From: threen...@yahoo.com
>To: neoni...@googlegroups.com
>Subject: RE: [POSSIBLE SPAM] [neonixie-l] Re: Design my own Nixie
>Clock?
>Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2012 19:01:51 -0700 (PDT)
>
>>
>>>
>>> First of all, I have no experience in circuit design, electronics,
>or

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[John Rehwinkel]

> A couple of years ago just for fun I started from
> scratch and designed a nixie clock circuit from the
> ground up (pun intended), that uses (6) 74HC160 counters.

How do you do the divide-by-6 digits? Just use gates to reset the counters
when they get to 6? I'm more used to using 7492 counters for that task, so
I'm curious.

- John

[Adam Jacobs]

I use processors and this doesn't seem elementary to me!
I wouldn't say that a microcontroller is more difficult to use than
straight logic. On the contrary, I always refer to my penchant for using
microcontrollers as "cheating".. or the software engineer's way out:
"Only design enough electronics so that you can write the rest in
software". ;)
Some day I'll be good enough to design my own clock using straight logic
chips..

-Adam

[David Forbes]

Synchronous counters will accept a parallel data input and/or a reset signal.
The tricky part is going from 12 to 01. You have to issue a load command with
0001 on the data bus to set it to 1.

The '160 has an asynchronous reset, while the '162 has a synchronous reset. So
the logic would be slightly different for those two parts.

The advantage of synchronous counters is that you don't get glitches, and if you
do, they don't matter since the signals are only sampled on the rising edge of
the clock.

It's not so important for a time-of-day clock, but designing circuits to work at
a hundred MHz is a lot easier with synchronous logic.

--
David Forbes, Tucson, AZ

[Sean]

So, right now I'm looking at taking John's advice and starting with a solderless board and some LED's.  I see most of these basic parts at RadioShack.  Is this a good place to get parts?  Any better places?  Also, where is a good place to get the 74141 drivers?  And the 5V power supply?  Any common items I can repurpose?

On the topic of drivers, is the 74141 pretty universal for all Nixie tubes?  I read somewhere about the "blue spot" problem being caused by using the wrong driver.  Sorry if these are pretty simple questions!

[Spencer W]

I pick up all my parts from eBay. Takes two weeks for it to arrive but you can't beat the price. Yes, I know there can be quality/fakes but so far the record has been good. :)

Sent from my iPhone

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[Adam Jacobs]

Sparkfun isn't bad. Also Limor Fried (ladyada)'s site: http://www.adafruit.com
Limor is a member of this group and a great person to deal with.
Radio Shack... They're trying to make a comeback into this area of retail, time will tell if they succeed. My experience has been that they cost about 5-10x as much as anywhere else.. especially on small stuff like transistors/resistors - which I normally buy from mouser or digikey. The nice thing about radioshack is that they are immediate, no shipping time.

The 74141 (the real kind) can be purchased from mouser. The Soviet clone is available on ebay and probably various member sites (sorry, I don't know who to plug here.. I only ever bought them from ebay). The "blue dot" problem is specific to IN-18 nixies, which you are unlikely to be messing with right out of the gate. 5v breadboard supply can be purchased from any of the "getting started in electronics" retailers as well as from many chinese/hongkong sellers on ebay.

-Adam

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[Tidak Ada]

74141 drivers are out of production. eBay and surplus shops are the best  place to get them. Also the Russian K155ID1 (epoxy) or KM155ID1 (ceramic) is an alternative and can withstand even higer voltages. The ceramic IC's have a lower (better) thermal resistance.

 

RadioShack is more expensive as distributors as Farnell and Mouser, however these shops are only useful for modern components. Best is to search the internet.

 

eric

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From: neoni...@googlegroups.com [mailto:neoni...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Sean
Sent: donderdag 16 augustus 2012 0:23
To: neoni...@googlegroups.com
Cc: dfo...@dakotacom.net
Subject: Re: [neonixie-l] Re: Design my own Nixie Clock?

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[chuck richards]

On the 12/24 selectable version of the '160 clock,
when it is in 12-hour mode, the thumbwheels must be
left preset for 0100.

Then, as David said, it loads that after 12:59:59

Chuck

>>For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
>>
>>
>>

[Adam Jacobs]

... and my wife thinks that _MY_ clocks are tricky to set!

[chuck richards]

That is why I vastly prefer the straight 24-hour only
version of this circuit. It has simpler logic, one less
gate package, and when you are done setting it, the
thumbwheels must be preset to 0000.

The logic is simple: On the next clock pulse
after 23:59:59, it loads whatever is
left set on the thumbwheels.

It is much easier to remember to always return the
thumbwheels to all zeros than to set them to 0100.

>
>---- Original Message ----
>From: ad...@jacobs.us
>To: neoni...@googlegroups.com
>Subject: Re: [neonixie-l] Re: Design my own Nixie Clock?

>Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2012 15:57:12 -0700
>
>>.... and my wife thinks that _MY_ clocks are tricky to set!

[Adam Jacobs]

Also, I should add.... This is the reason that there is such a thing as
a "User Interface Engineer".

;)

[John Rehwinkel]

> So, right now I'm looking at taking John's advice and starting with a solderless board and some LED's. I see most of these basic parts at RadioShack. Is this a good place to get parts?

It's certainly handy, but you can generally get things cheaper elsewhere. Of course, I'm spoiled - when the local Radio Snack folded, I showed up with a station wagon
and a stack of $20s and bought out their carded stock, along with the pegboard holders for them:

http://www.vitriol.com/images/house/partswall.jpg

MY Radio Snack is open whenever I need it!

> Any better places? Also, where is a good place to get the 74141 drivers? And the 5V power supply? Any common items I can repurpose?

Now you're talking! There are lots of electronic items that use LEDs, and any of them that you don't want any more are fair game. 5V power supplies
are starting to become fairly common too - most plug-in USB chargers will work fine, and power supplies for USB hubs are also generally 5V. Eyeball
any "wall wart" type supplies you have lying around - a fair number of things use them, especially computer stuff like cable modems and wireless hubs.

If you have a local thrift store, they're often good places to get stuff like that. I've seen plug-in power supplies of all sorts of voltages for less than a dollar.
I just snip off the connector and connect the wires to whatever I'm building - some solderless breadboards come with binding posts that make this easy.
If not, solder some solid wire to the leads and plug that into the breadboard (electrical tape or heat stink tubing helps insulate the joints. Note that when
I snip off connectors like that, I leave a few inches of wire on them, in case I need that kind of connector some day - I'm a total packrat.

The usual DIY vendors (adafruit, sparkfun, and so forth) all offer 5V plug-in supplies for reasonable prices. Most of the on-line parts stores (Mouser,
Digkey, Element14, Farnell, etc.).

The 7441, 74141, and the Russian counterparts are pretty common, and there are several sources for those, including sites run by members of this list.
If you just want one or two to get started, send me an email with your mailing address and I'll dig out a couple and send 'em to you.

> On the topic of drivers, is the 74141 pretty universal for all Nixie tubes? I read somewhere about the "blue spot" problem being caused by using the wrong driver. Sorry if these are pretty simple questions!

Yeah, it'll cheerfully drive pretty much any nixie tube you're likely to play with. If you start getting into the oddball segmented displays or giant (coke can size) tubes,
you'll need to drive them differently, but at that point, you'd have likely acquired a lot more knowledge about the subject in general. There are, of course, lots of
other ways to drive nixie tubes too.

- John

[JohnK]

From my experience of modern devices I suspected that they are extinct.


John K.
[Some background in industrial engineering, ergonomics .... and
design-for-manufacture (which of course musn't nullify the user and repairer
aspects).] Yeah I know "repair, what's that?" Goes to show my age.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Adam Jacobs" <ad...@jacobs.us>
To: <neoni...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2012 8:39 AM
Subject: Re: [neonixie-l] Re: Design my own Nixie Clock?

> Also, I should add.... This is the reason that there is such a thing as a
> "User Interface Engineer".
>
> ;)

>.....clip...

[dr pepper]

My first clock circuit was a 7 segment led, and I built it using a
microprocessor, a 6502, I had little experience at the time and it
wasnt easy.

I suggest that you build a published design first then either modify
it or build your own version, I'd also reccomend you build one that
runs from low volts dc, mains powered stuff is kinda risky.

> >.....clip...- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Michel]

That is a cool processor, it was my first one to program in assembly
language back in the early 1980's. It was used in the Acorn BBC
computers, they came onto the market with a Z80 co-processor
afterwards, which became my favorite for obvious reasons.

Michel

[John Rehwinkel]

>> My first clock circuit was a 7 segment led, and I built it using a
>> microprocessor, a 6502, I had little experience at the time and it
>> wasnt easy.

> That is a cool processor, it was my first one to program in assembly
> language back in the early 1980's. It was used in the Acorn BBC
> computers, they came onto the market with a Z80 co-processor
> afterwards, which became my favorite for obvious reasons.

I originally learned on a 6800, but at first, I didn't have enough RAM to
run an assembler, so I had to hand-assemble my code and program it
in hex. Later, I got an Atari and learned its 6502 processor was similar.

The Z-80 is a really nice CPU too, quite advanced when it came out.

The Acorn people continued their tradition of leading edge technology
by designing their own processor, the Acorn RISC Machine. Commonly
called ARM, it's a leading CPU for mobile and embedded processing
even today. An offshoot of it, the DEC StrongARM, was advertised as
"the first supercomputer that can run on an AA cell".

The ARM instruction set is quite well designed, both for writing
assembly code for it directly, as well as for compiling from C.

- John

[Ron Schuster]

I have to be REALLY desperate before I'll go into a Radio Shack, like if I need a part RIGHT NOW, which rarely happens since I usually have multiple projects going at any one time. In most of my experiences trying to talk with their salespeople, they seem very arrogant, like you can't possibly find this item anywhere else any cheaper (yeah, right!). Like others here have said, they are usually way more expensive than ordering the parts pretty much anywhere else. 

I ordered a lot of my parts from online distributors like Mouser, DigiKey, All Electronics. SparkFun really is a fun place to visit, but I don't usually order a lot from there; they seem rather expensive, but I'll find things there that the other places don't have, and the comments that customers post on the products can be very educational.

A friend of mine recently turned me on to looking for parts on eBay, which had never occurred to me before. If you order only from US Only or North America you can get your parts in a few days. (I'm assuming you're in the US.) Set your Location filter in eBay to US Only or North America. You may pay just a little more for the parts, but for the small difference it's worth not having to wait for overseas shipments, and it's still way cheaper than Radio Shack!

If you're just getting started in electronics, look for "assortments" on eBay to fill up your parts bins quickly with all the basic components you need to get started. For example, "2500pcs 50 Value 1/4W 0.25W Carbon Film Resistor Assortment Kit (1 ohm~1M ohm)" for 12 bucks! You can do the same for capacitors, inductors, and so on.

[philthepill]

 

 

I agree that Radio Shack is a poor source - very limited selection of parts. Look around your area for a surplus electronics, tools etc stores in your area. They are all over the country. Look on your newstand for a magazine called Nuts 'n Volts, they have many adds from surplus dealers. In Toronto Canada  there is a store on Queen St called  Active Surplus - I have been buying all sorts of components from them since the late 1970's, Prices are very low, they used to sell bulk quantities such as a cup of transistors for a few dollars. I still go there. Second hand shops like Goodwill and Salvation Army thrift stores often sell electronic goods cheaply (but GoodWill is getting pricey now) - you can scavage parts or power supplies. I bought a Sony calculator with about 20 small Nixies (lucky find) for only $10. It works perfectly but is rather large.  Mail order and big retailers such a DigiKey, Mouser should be chosen for latest technology and all at one location buying.

 

Another source of electronics are "ham radio fleamarkets" - check the ARRL web-site for links. These are large garage-sale type sales usually held on week-ends, mainly by private sellers, but amazing stuff shows up all the time.  The Dayton Hamvention held annually in May has hundreds of dealers of every imaginable electronic device.  I try to keep my costs as low as possible by following these ideas. 

[Frederick Heald]

Just curious - why not build a "kit" clock or two to get some practice
with the circuitry before you try to engineer and build from scratch?
There's a wide variety of cool kits, analog and digital; just mounting
and adding buttons gives you a lot of customization opportunity.

[Adam Jacobs]

I agree with one of the other posters... I think that the best place to
start is with an existing design. There are tons available on the
internet, you can order parts from mouser.com

-Adam

[Charles MacDonald]

On 12-08-16 12:21 PM, philthepill wrote:


> In Toronto Canada there is a store on Queen St called Active Surplus - I have been buying all sorts of components from them since the late 1970's, Prices are very low, they used to sell bulk quantities such as a cup of transistors for a few dollars

Back in the day there were many places like that in Toronto and
Montreal. One of the biggest ones was ETCO of Montral, alas they closed
the retail store and moved to Vermont as a wholesale business.
http://www.surplustraders.net/

> Mail order and big retailers such a DigiKey, Mouser
> should be chosen for latest technology and all at one location buying.

Another mail order place that is fairly cheep is futurlec, although they
are a bit mysterious, as they day they are in Australia, but the
packages from them come from Thailand...

http://www.futurlec.com/index.shtml


--
Charles MacDonald Stittsville Ontario
cm...@zeusprune.ca Just Beyond the Fringe
http://users.trytel.com/~cmacd/tubes.html
No Microsoft Products were used in sending this e-mail.

[westdave]

http://www.allspectrum.com/store/nixie-tubes-accessories-c-26.html?osCsid=61efbcd5b8d1711cfdc99e5f92000b65

it is a micro but its a good one for beginners
6 digit direct drive clock chip (from Moses)
a very cool IC that will direct drive 6 x74141

12/24 hr
slot machine scroll
day /date/yr
53 settings with three buttons

also what blue spot problem?
are auroras a problem?
is the spot on Jupiter a problem?

[Nicholas Stock]

Check out www.tubeclockdb.com for a great repository of nixie tube clocks and suppliers etc..

Nick

--

[Adam Jacobs]

I built a clock around the 6-digit version of this chip... and then I was so impresesed with it, I built another with the 4-digit version.
It is a _very_ well designed nixie clock chip. Moses clearly put a lot of work into polishing the design.

-Adam

[Quixotic Nixotic]

On 15 Aug 2012, at 00:12, Adam Jacobs wrote:

> Hi Sean,
> If it was me, I'd probably start with the designs that don't use a microcontroller. There are lots of all-logic designs out there, here is the famous one:
> http://www.electricstuff.co.uk/nixclock.html

I think many of us started here. I did. Personally I don't like the way the time editing works. It's so easy to overshoot the minutes with your magnet on the switch and then it will increment the hours and then you have to not only scroll around the minutes again more carefully but go and edit the hours too.

An simple mod lets you increment the hours and the minutes separately. Which works far better for me. I also found the CMOS very sensitive to stray noise, hence the need to readjust the time settings.

John S

[Adam Jacobs]

Yep, there is definitely room for adding your own modifications to the
circuit. The most humorous one for me is that when I transmit with my
amateur radio transceiver (especially in CW), the rf pulses back out
onto the power and make this clock run a little fast. Good grounds on
the transceiver as well as running the transceiver through an isolation
transformer helped a lot, but the clock is sensitive, that's for
certain. Adding a clip-on inductor or two is a big help, though.
If you build it, I'd recommend buying mains-rated push-buttons instead
of doing the reed switches. Not to say that the reed switches aren't
cool and all (I've got some I built that way), but overall, it can be a
hassle to try to find the magnet before you set your clock.. and it is
trickier as well.

-Adam