Recommended low-cost tube testing

[HikariFaith]

I have a bunch of tubes (NL-8422's and IN-12's) I haven't been able to test yet. I'm working on a new ultra-thin 8-tube nixie clock and calendar based off of CNLohr's tube driver design, but replacing the CH32V003 with an ESP32S2-MINI-2. Having come into this project as a complete electronics newbie, I'm not sure if my circuit will work properly and I haven't yet finalized my program. So while I'm working on this, and preparing to test my drivers in a single-tube setup, I'd like to test out my tubes to see if they're all in good working order in the meantime. What do you all recommend as good setups for testing my tubes? I'm looking for something low-cost, yet still reliable and easy to use so I can test each numeral on the tubes.

[n1ist]

Just use a 170v power supply, a suitable anode resistor, and switches (or clipleads or jumpers) to ground each cathode in turn.  That's the simplest solution.

[Mac Doktor]

On Sep 1, 2023, at 4:56 PM, HikariFaith <hikari...@gmail.com> wrote:

I'd like to test out my tubes to see if they're all in good working order in the meantime. What do you all recommend as good setups for testing my tubes? I'm looking for something low-cost, yet still reliable and easy to use so I can test each numeral on the tubes.

I have one of these:

https://nixietester.com/project/pro-nixie-tester/

The construction is a bit flimsy but it does everything. Note that you while you can use loose wires it also uses Marcin's universal socket system. This makes testing lots of the same tube much more convenient although it adds to the overall cost. You'll need three cheap DMMs for calculating the anode resistor values.

Terry Bowman, KA4HJH
"The Mac Doctor"

https://www.astarcloseup.com

“...the book said something astonishing, a very big thought. The stars, it said, were suns but very far away. The Sun was a star but close up.”—Carl Sagan, "The Backbone Of Night", Cosmos, 1980

[Benoit Tourret]

I made a selector with a switch lorlin  PT6594  and a simple 12V to 170V HT converter  + one resistor.

I made it in 3 different modules, but you can build it on a single board, with a socket to test your tubes.

the pt6594 have 11 positions you can test from 0 to 9 + a decimal point.

I made also an arduino + K155 chip, but a misconnexion of the 170V will destroy either the arduino bord or the chip.

with a manual switching, you can also insist on poisonned digits to clean them.