An Introduction,

[Craig Garnett]

Hi, I'm Craig from the north of England. 

A friend of mine has had a liking for nixies for a while and we've spoke about building clock kits before. However, he bought 12 x Z570m tubes and after a (probably drunken) conversation that I wasn't involved in, it was decided to build a device that displays the distance from Earth of the two Voyager spacecraft and display it on the nixies. 

So the question was asked, "do you think you could build it?" to which the obvious answer was "I don't know but I'll have a go"

A couple of months later we have a working prototype displaying the distances of both craft in miles and km on multiplexed 12x7 segment leds.

Next step it to get it working on the nixies,

I know from the datasheets (google translated from German) that typical anode current is 2mA and I think that the max multiplexed current is 12mA for no more than 2mS although I've seen elsewhere that it could be 2mA averaged over the duty cycle which would be 24mA

My output routine can do all 12 tubes in 1mS but I can insert microsecond delays to slow it to whatever works best.

I'm sure that I'll be back with questions soon.

Nice to meet you all,

Craig

[gregebert]

I'm not a fan of multiplexing nixies because of the additional current that can lead to shorter lifespan. Multiplexing was common when components for driving tubes were expensive and tubes were plentiful; today it's the opposite. As long as the tubes dont run 24/7, you will probably get a lot of enjoyment from your display. A lot of us use passive IR (PIR) sensors to activate our displays only when someone is there to look at it.

I would use 12mA for 1msec as your starting point, and if it's bright enough, try reducing the current.

[Craig Garnett]

Thanks for that info, I'll definitely consider the PIR approach.

If I were to run the tubes static, how would I go about driving 120 cathodes?

Craig

[newxito]

I use five HV5622 high voltage shift registers to drive 14 nixies, this only needs 3 digital outputs of the mcu, 4 if you also use the blank signal (e.g.; for dimming).  Not cheap but it works fine.

The downside of this approach is that, to be in spec, you need a 12V rail.  However, it should also work with 5V.

[Robert G. Schaffrath]

On Tuesday, 12 September 2023 at 00:07:04 UTC+1 gregebert wrote:

I'm not a fan of multiplexing nixies because of the additional current that can lead to shorter lifespan.

 

Me neither as I can hear the whine of the vibrating segments in my old B-7971 clock I built in 1979 that is multiplexed. As for shortened life, I do not know what other manufacturers did but the Rodan GR-111pa tubes I have were designed to be multiplexed. The "a" variant were for multiplexed use and the non-"a" direct drive from what I understand from the spec sheet. The board I pulled my GR-111pa's from was definitely designed for multiplex operation as all the tube segments were wired in parallel with the anodes separate. They do work fine as direct drive tubes. I assume they have a more robust design to stand up to the demands of multiplexing.

[Craig Garnett]

Thanks for all the info,

Currently I'm only using 2 chips (and opto isolators) to multiplex the display whereas going static looks like it will increase the complexity quite a bit.

I'll see how bright I can get the tubes without the current getting excessive.

I've also found some neat little PIR modules that can be easily incorporated into the design.

Craig

[Roman Spark]

Hello,
My Nixie clocks can show not only the time but also any other information that is transmitted to it via the serial port. You connect the watch with a USB cable to your computer and send it whatever you need. I mainly use it to show the price of Bitcoin and the results of football matches online. However, in general, the possibilities are not limited to this, you can also show the temperature, pressure, ping, fps, and much, much more. So I thought it would be fun to do something new on two clocks at once. I've never done anything like this before.

The resultant is attached. Data is taken once a minute from https://theskylive.com/voyager1-info

Good luck with your project,

Roman

середа, 13 вересня 2023 р. о 11:25:43 UTC+3 Craig Garnett пише:

[Michail Wilson]

Good job.

 

I make similar projects for Price stats.

 

Michail Wilson

206-920-6312

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