total nixie weirdness ,i approve

[westdave]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aYYE3F4zM0

this is a friend of mine(living at the edge where there are no last names) ,when he started this he knew very little about stepper switches and how they work ..now ,he has wrote the book,i assure you there are no diodes in this "thing" and please note the pulsar for the stepper is a Mercury switch and a motor to tilt it.

is he an inch from maddness? i don't think so ! watch his 31 videos and be amazed, welcome to boonsburg,yes it is all true!

[Nick]

10/10 - Mad as a box of frogs.

I want one.

Nick

[Quixotic Nixotic]

I was given three of these Gottlieb VFDs recently. They are quite cute chunky 1 inch / 25.4mm digits, but what can I do with twin 3 digits? I guess there is a 1,000s dot on there too, so a counter of some kind is obvious. On board UDN6118As.

Ideas please,

John S

[John Rehwinkel]

> I was given three of these Gottlieb VFDs recently. They are quite cute chunky 1 inch / 25.4mm digits, but what can I do with twin 3 digits? I guess there is a 1,000s dot on there too, so a counter of some kind is obvious. On board UDN6118As.

Nice pinball displays - I think it would even fit the Raven machine I have.

With 2 3-digit groups, my first thought is inside and outside temperature. Also useful as a timer (think big readable kitchen timer) or executive decision maker (20 vs 30) or "yES" and "no". Passable nightlight, dimmable by turning off segments. Art project? Automated swear jar? Big tyre pressure gauge?

- John

[greg...@hotmail.com]

I would make another clock, with all three units.

The first unit would have the day, and month.

The second unit would have the numerical date and tens-hours

The third unit would have minutes & seconds.

The segment layout should allow you to form most alpha characters, except Q, X, V, Z

But you dont need those for day, month.

I would also block-over the unused digits (I've painted the backside of glass with paint)

[NeonJohn]

Just as soon as I can get it posted to my web site I'm going to
open-source the interval timer that I designed for our (fluxeon.com)
induction heaters. It uses an Atmel processor, 3 LED display and a
quadrature shaft encoder to enter the time interval. Easy enough to
substitute the VFD for the LEDs. You could use one set of 3 digits to
display the setpoint and the other set to show the count-down. Only a
minor change in the firmware.

If you're interested, I'll push the priority of editing my site a little
higher.

John



--
John DeArmond
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
http://www.fluxeon.com <-- THE source for induction heaters
http://www.neon-john.com <-- email from here
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- Best damned Blog on the net
PGP key: wwwkeys.pgp.net: BCB68D77

[JohnK]

Desk counter for Lawyer's Desk [similar to taxi meter].

 

John K

Australia

[PS. Our lawyer works out of two different offices about 20km apart. I had a meeting arranged at the one closer to me. Recently I was charged (considerably) for a phone call to the other office asking why there was still no one at my local office 7 minutes past the appointment time.]

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[lai...@wcoil.com]

If I had those I would join a doomsday cult and have the nicest countdown
clock for the end!
Tim Laing

Or I would buy a pinball machine to put them in.

[kay486]

why not make a clock? you could easily use them for 4 digit clock and just leave the edge digits.

[Quixotic Nixotic]

Thank you so much everyone for the suggestions about what to do with these VFDs. I think I shall have to fire them up now and see what I can be done from there.

I have a diagram for the board and while I think I can generate the necessary 60 volts DC quite happily, I am not so sure of the best method of supplying the 5v AC for the filament. I know there was a dedicated chip for this, now obsolete, but I think someone here had a workaround.

What would be the best method to supply this 5v AC? Can I chop a waveform and bend it into a sine somehow? I have no idea what current I need. All help gratefully received.

Best wishes, John S

[John Rehwinkel]

> I have a diagram for the board and while I think I can generate the necessary 60 volts DC quite happily, I am not so sure of the best method of supplying the 5v AC for the filament. I know there was a dedicated chip for this, now obsolete, but I think someone here had a workaround.

Konstantin uses a TSC428 for that:

http://www.kosbo.com/kitdocs/iv11_6d_cl/IV11ClockCircuitDiagram.pdf

> What would be the best method to supply this 5v AC? Can I chop a waveform and bend it into a sine somehow? I have no idea what current I need. All help gratefully received.

No need for it to be a sine wave, a square wave is just fine here.

- John

[Quixotic Nixotic]

Reading a bit more about how Gottlieb used these displays, they put the filament AC voltage on an 8v DC offset pedestal for the big displays and 5v DC for the smaller VFDs. Is this going to be necessary if I am using a 0v-5v AC filament that never goes negative?

From the Gottlieb technical manual:

[John Rehwinkel]

> Reading a bit more about how Gottlieb used these displays, they put the filament AC voltage on an 8v DC offset pedestal for the big displays and 5v DC for the smaller VFDs. Is this going to be necessary if I am using a 0v-5v AC filament that never goes negative?

No, shouldn't be necessary. It's nice to have the filaments a little bit positive, so grounding the anodes/grids gives a good solid turn off (effectively, negative bias). Running them with 0-5V gives an effective -2.5V bias, which should be sufficient (the transformer-derived AC doesn't have that built-in bias). You can, if you want, AC couple the drive and float it higher to reduce ghosting, but I doubt it'll be necessary.

- John

[Quixotic Nixotic]

Thank you for the detailed response John, it is much appreciated. I have ordered some MAX628CPA+ samples - they seem to be similar to the TSC428 with non-inverted/inverted outputs for the AC drive.

John S