Neon ring counter nixie clock

[neutron spin]

Hello All,

Looking for some ideas or plans for a neon ring counter nixie clock.
I have some IN-12's that are very anxious to be born again in a neon
ring counter clock....thanks...

Robert W8UUU

[Nicholas Stock]

Have you checked out www.nixieneon.com? I've built a few of these and they're great clocks....

Nick

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[neutron spin]

Thanks for the info...They really look nice but I was thinking of a
design just using neons as ring counters with no microcontroller...old
school...regards

Robert W8UUU

On Aug 8, 6:26 pm, Nicholas Stock <nickst...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Have you checked outwww.nixieneon.com?I've built a few of these and

[Joe Croft]

Nixieneon started out just rings and at it's heart the CPU just keeps the
rings honest by resetting them to the correct time every 5 minutes

The rings are quite fickle

-joe

[neutron spin]

Great!...Sorry but I really did not look at the schematic....This is a
nice design...I will order the PCB soon...I know the neons do not
always fire at the right time...or when you want them to fire
(fickle).....this combines old school design with modern
technology...besides who wants a clock that is prone to error?.....:)

Robert W8UUU

On Aug 8, 9:34 pm, Joe Croft <j...@croftj.net> wrote:
> Nixieneon started out just rings and at it's heart the CPU just keeps the
> rings honest by resetting them to the correct time every 5 minutes
>
> The rings are quite fickle
>
> -joe
>
> On Monday 08 August 2011 19:47:45 neutron spin wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Thanks for the info...They really look nice but I was thinking of a
> > design just using neons as ring counters with no microcontroller...old
> > school...regards
>
> > Robert W8UUU
>
> > On Aug 8, 6:26 pm, Nicholas Stock <nickst...@gmail.com> wrote:

> > > Have you checked outwww.nixieneon.com?I'vebuilt a few of these and

[Quixotic Nixotic]

Hi Robert,

I am currently in dialogue with an Australian person, who is on this
list and who has successfully made a ring counter clock using IN-3s.
His information and help is proving very useful to me. The clock is
based largely on Pieter-Tjerk de Boer's clock, but uses transistors
to drive the nixies rather than the opto-coupling system used by Pieter:
http://wwwhome.cs.utwente.nl/~ptdeboer/ham/neonclock/

Michael has kindly documented his project and has a web page at:
http://members.iinet.net.au/~mminns/NeonBulbClock/NeonBulb.html

The IN-3s are a good choice in that they have a wide striking to
maintaining voltage. This voltage difference is reasonably constant,
although it varies up and down the voltage scale from neon to neon
and thus the neons do need adequate burning in and careful matching
into sets. Michael has an Excel spreasheet documenting his
measurements for the neons, available from the website above.

The neons are slightly photo-sensitive in themselves and change
depending on the ambient light levels. Bear this in mind and try to
batch match the neons under constant lighting conditions. They also
fall foul of the problem that they will not light in the dark, again
imposing a level of complexity. Pieter-Tjerk de Boer describes this
issue on his own website.

How old-school you want to be depends on you. Pieter-Tjerk de Boer
has been very purist in his design. I am going the other way for
mine. PCBs, maybe even some surface mount stuff. Unsure if I am going
to use a real time clock and microcontroller yet, but I might, to set
the clock, sync up the rings and provide battery backup.

Be sure to buy at least four times the number of neons than you will
actually use in one clock, so you have plenty of choice.

John S

[Tidak Ada]

May be these are alternatives and lots of theory:

{ http://www.dos4ever.com/ring/ring.html ]

[ http://wwwhome.cs.utwente.nl/~ptdeboer/ham/neonclock/ ]

Look also for a (pdf copy of the book of J.B. Dance (M.Sc., B,Sc.):
'Electronic Counting Circuits'.

eric

[Joe Croft]

Thank you! I really had to swallow hard to put the processor on the clock, but
it was needed. It also added a little eye candy with the quarter hour marker
lamps as well as being able to add in a rtc so that it could survive power
interruptions.

If you wanted to do some real serious play with an xacto knife and some wire,
you could rewire the switches on the board to allow you to set it w/o the
processor and then just let it run with no processor.

Maybe on the next run of boards I'll consider making the jumpable. I kind of
remember that was much easier to say than do :)

-joe

[Tidak Ada]

Hi Joe,

I have the same feeling in developing my clock. I first wanted to use only
realy's in the conters, utill I discovered that the number of swichings
should be far beyound the life expectance of the relay's. Now I think only
the hours and minutes counters with relays and the rest by dekatrons (I have
some 12 counters!) Hopefully they have a long enough life.
Your idea to use a µP as a back-up realtime clock sounds fine, however My
main clock is a verry stable TCXO of 4 MHz that I have to devide to quater
seconds. The first stage has to be a TTL or CMOS divider, followed by a
Elesta EZ10B and some Sylvania 6879's.
Then a GS10B and a GZ12D for the seconds and the same for the minutes.

It should be nice to get soem more information about your µP setup as time
correcting element.

eric

-----Original Message-----
From: neoni...@googlegroups.com [mailto:neoni...@googlegroups.com] On

[Grahame Marsh]

Hi
I built a clock using XC18 trigger tubes

http://www.sgitheach.org.uk/nixie3.html

As a clock it worked well as long as it was kept in the light. Left in
total darkness overnight it would be 50:50 what you would find in the
morning. I ran it under a small UV lamp and it survived every night
(leds are not allowed). Now its just a demonstration clock. I had
started with two electrode neon bulb rings but found them more unreliable.

I recently bought a bunch of Z700U trigger tubes which have a keep alive
electrode for total darkness operation. I've laid out (in Eagle) a
mains to 1 Hz divider card but not had time to brew and test yet. I
bought the trigger tubes from

galin...@gmail.com

But I don't know what his stock levels are like.

BTW if anyone in the group has a few Z700W (dual trigger) trigger tubes
I'd be very interested in a few

Grahame

[Quixotic Nixotic]

On 9 Aug 2011, at 12:30, Joe Croft wrote:

> Thank you! I really had to swallow hard to put the processor on the
> clock, but
> it was needed. It also added a little eye candy with the quarter
> hour marker
> lamps as well as being able to add in a rtc so that it could
> survive power
> interruptions.

Joe,

Can you explain why you needed to have a three transistor stage
trigger between the later stages - it seems like overkill. Was it
really necessary to condition the signal between rings in this way?
If so, why?

John S

[Joe Croft]

John,

I would have top go back and play with it once again (this is where better
note keeping on my part would've paid off) to be sure, but what I remember is
that I would get fluctuations and noise on the signal feeding the stages and
with the simple 1 transistor circuit, the rings were getting triggered. These
signals would stay high for up to 10 mins depending on the ring. I put in the
extra stage to make the actual trigger for the ring a short pulse. This made
it significantly less prone to fire on signal variations. It may be a tad bit
overkill but I have found it to be reliable.

-joe

[electrofish]

Does anyone know if NixieNeon Store http://www.nixieneon.com/perl/nxStoreFront.pl
is still active?  Tried emailing but no response

I would really like to build one of these clocks

Thanks
John

[Joe Croft]

Hi John,

Nixieneon is stil active. I probably have to check the email I have on the site. I was also in Poland getting married through a big chunk of August, but am back now.

-joe

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[electrofish]

Thanks Joe
I'll PM you if I can : )
Regards
John

[Dylan Distasio]

I would just like to add that this is a great kit, and I would highly recommend it.  Building one of these in 2012 as a novice greatly increased my skillset and experience.  I made a mistake early on and fried a bunch of components.

Joe was incredibly patient and helpful with troubleshooting and pointed me towards an amazing desoldering vacuum tool that I still use today (SilverStat Soldapullt). 

My only negative comment is that some of the neon rings are incredibly tricky to keep firing properly over time.  I spent a lot of time trying to find lamps that would fire in the ring properly on a regular basis.  The early rings are fine, but the later ones in the circuit occasionally skip ahead.  I have the clock addon so it keeps the time accurate so it's not a big deal, but in my experience, be prepared to spend a lot of time on some of the rings.  The neon lamps available don't have much wiggle room.

Joe, congrats on the marriage and thanks again for all your help!

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