Another Numitron clock

[Anders Mikkelsen]

I came across some NOS DR-2100 Numitrons a while back, and decided to design a clock around them, as a delayed Christmas present for family and friends.

The design is pretty basic, but it gave me a chance to finally make something which resembles a finished product, using some basic woodworking with hand tools, and I must say I'm really happy with the result. 

I never really fell in love with Numitrons from seeing photos, but a friend had built a clock with some Russian ones and that was the turning point for me. Since I acquired enough tubes to make some clocks, I decided to go with a mass-manufacturable design on a single PCB, in order to simplify the assembly.

On the firmware side, there was a lot of experimentation with WiFi, NTP, DST and time zones, but I recently decided to strip it down to bare basics with manually settable time, as that ended up being the lesser evil compared to captive portal web configuration and WiFi setup with endless complications. Often simpler is better, and I'm happy to see that my single button time setting code is intuitive enough that most people figure it out on their own.

I'm still a bit on the fence about sharing design files, but I'm gravitating towards doing so. For now this is just a showcase of my own project, which might hopefully inspire people to pick up some nice wood and a hand plane.

[Anders Mikkelsen]

As there is a strict size limit when it comes to attachments here, I added the rest of the photos to a google album: https://photos.app.goo.gl/eYSbHhbduTadiHWLA

[Jeff Walton]

Very nice looking!  Clean and simple.  I like the wood.

 

Jeff

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[Nicholas Stock]

Well done Anders, looks very nice... numitrons don't get enough love in my opinion, they have a nice warm incandescent glow all of their own..

Cheers,

Nick

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[Anders Mikkelsen]

Thanks! I really like how the tubes are perfectly readable in bright indoor lighting, while still not being offensively bright in a dark room. 

[gregebert]

Not just "A" clock....but a bunch of them. Nice work.

I got bit by the Numitron bug last year and made my own one as well with DTF104B tubes. I did a lot of extra circuit design to reduce the surge-current via pre-heating and adding series resistance, and software even checks for a burned-out filament. I was still worried about burning-out filaments, particularly the ones displaying seconds, that I have a button to turn on the clock for a few minutes. The seconds will run for a minute, then shut off.

[Robert Thompson]

Hi. My name is Rob Thompson and I have about 5 or 6 regular sized Numitrons and 2 or 3 small sized Numitrons. The small ones actually plug into an old circular I.C. socket. Anyway I'm hoping perhaps you will release the code and controller used. I'm not good at writing code but I could design a PCB no doubt. I'd love to build a Numitron clock. I have an old David Forbes Nixie clock (ZM1040 tubes) that I love but would love a Numitron one also. My two cents worth. Love the photos. Beautiful work btw. Rob Thompson 

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