A use for all those Itron displays I've got in the garage

[petehand]

Inspired by Grahame Marsh's "approx" and "proverb" clocks (http://www.sgitheach.org.uk/vfd3b.html), here's my effort. It tells the date and approximate time ("nearly ten to three" etc), has a complete calendar of US special days including the ones that move (eg it shows Easter correctly for the whole 21st century), a thousand different proverbs and quotations, and 366 historic birthdays, one for every day of the year. (I was torn who to pick for December 25th. The obvious would be Jesus Christ, but I opted for Sir Isaac Newton instead.) Additionally you can put in 30 messages of your own, such as birthday or anniversary reminders, to show on specific dates, plus sixteen of your favorite witty sayings or scurrilous remarks to show up at any time. I ended up with less than 128 bytes of Flash memory free and not a single unused byte of EEPROM, which gives me great satisfaction.

Since the LM9022 is going out of style, I used an Si9986 H bridge (U4, bottom right) for the filament AC, driven by the processor off the oscillator that generates the 35V. A pair of HV5812s drive the 16 grids and 16 anodes at a multiplex frequency of 1kHz. There's an ambient light sensor above the display for automatic brightness control. It plugs into any USB port for power, which is also the way you edit the personal messages. A supercap keeps time for a day or two when it's unplugged - personal messages are stored in EEPROM and won't be lost.

[Mike Mitchell]

Reminds me of the "Wise Clock", which will scroll quotations and personal messages read from an SD card.   The wise clock uses a 16x32 bi-color LED matrix though.

http://timewitharduino.blogspot.com/2009/07/shoppe.html

[Dylan Distasio]

Very nice!  Any chance of a kit?

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to neonixie-l+...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to neoni...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/dd3a2e0f-50b4-4605-9de4-f645475744b1%40googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Nicholas Stock]

The wiseclock is a pretty cool device that is packed with a lot of software...I've built many and you can chain up to 4 displays (either the 3mm or 5mm LED matrixes from Sure Electronics) to make some very large scrolling timepieces/messaging devices.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to neonixie-l+...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to neoni...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/7884dc52-bc9c-4e2a-b7c8-f75c7e8a622e%40googlegroups.com.

[petehand]

In principle yes, but it's difficult to put together a kit for a surface mount project. For one thing, I can't program the QFP processor chip until it's soldered into the board. I can do you an assembled board if you like.

[Arne Rossius]

Hi,

petehand wrote:
> I can't program the QFP processor chip until
> it's soldered into the board.

If you really want to do that for a small number of kits, I found that
it can be done by just putting the chip on top of the footprint on the
PCB (otherwise empty, except for the programmer connection) and pushing
it down with your thumb during programming. A gold-plated PCB seems to
work best. I have programmed about 100 controllers this way over the
last few years and didn't have any problems.

Best Regards,
Arne

[Grahame Marsh]

Pete,

I'm glad you found the ideas useful. I have a much larger proverb list which I chose from for my proverb generator when I became short of flash.  I can let you (or anyone else) have it to play with. It includes a lot of other sayings, almost duplicates and the "Way of Mrs Cosmopolite" (Thief of Time, Terry Pratchett).  Also here

http://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/index.php/The_Way_of_Mrs._Cosmopilite

I also have a few hundred proverbs in French (somewhere).

Did you use any compression for the text? I just about doubled the number of proverbs I could fit in doing so.

I have a few 20x4 Itron display but I have been seriously distracted by scope clocks.  They requires just 5V and generate all the required VFD voltages and multiplex signals, and have a simple parallel interface.  I was going to use a SD card for text storage as simple ascii files so they could be edited on a PC and then the SD card transfered into the clock/proverb.  With just a 1 MB card that is almost "infinite" storage.

Cheers Grahame

On 24/06/2014 10:18, petehand wrote:

Inspired by Grahame Marsh's "approx" and "proverb" clocks (http://www.sgitheach.org.uk/vfd3b.html), here's my effort. ... I ended up with less than 128 bytes of Flash memory free and not a single unused byte of EEPROM, which gives me great satisfaction.

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to neonixie-l+...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to neoni...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/dd3a2e0f-50b4-4605-9de4-f645475744b1%40googlegroups.com.

[petehand]

Grahame,

Thank you for the idea. I looked at the proverb list on your site, but in the end I used a combination of several other lists that includes quotations. I have other kinds of list I've been putting together, including bible verses and latin epithets, but regrettably I have only one lifetime and many other things to do with it.

The basis of this clock was a full calendar that I wrote some years ago. It knows how to work out all the special days, including Easter, and has a variety of messages for all of them. Apart from what I put in, it will store user messages in EEPROM for birthday and anniversary reminders, etc. American calendar, though - perhaps I should do a British calendar version and send it to my mother. She would appreciate the bible verses. I made the prototype with some HP LED dot matrix displays I had laying around, HDSP2503 - simple parallel interface - but they cost nearly $50 each and the clock needs two, so my attention turned to the VFDs.

I considered using compression, but I had 64k of flash available and found it difficult to fill it up even uncompressed. Besides, see comment above about number of available lifetimes.

Here's a pic of the HDSP clock. I have a bag of Noritake graphic VFDs that I rescued from a dumpster, complete display, serial/parallel. I haven't quite decided what to do with them. It seems sacrilegious to waste them on text or numbers. Maybe I'll do a clock with rolling graphic numbers like an odometer.

Pete

[Grahame Marsh]

Pete,

As always it is interesting to hear what you have put in.  I might ask you for some of your lists when I get back to proverbs - I fancy a scope clock that includes a scrolling proverb display.  The other list I meant to mention are Blake's rhyming couplets (A robin redbreast in a cage Puts all heaven in a rage etc) which go very well mixed in with proverbs.  Having only one lifetime and what to play with during that lifetime is unfortunately a problem we all share.

(Back to servicing the kitchen range....)

Grahame

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguries_of_Innocence

On 07/07/2014 10:01, petehand wrote:

Grahame,

Thank you for the idea. I looked at the proverb list on your site, but in the end I used a combination of several other lists that includes quotations. I have other kinds of list I've been putting together, including bible verses and latin epithets, but regrettably I have only one lifetime and many other things to do with it.

The basis of this clock was a full calendar that I wrote some years ago. It knows how to work out all the special days, including Easter, and has a variety of messages for all of them. Apart from what I put in, it will store user messages in EEPROM for birthday and anniversary reminders, etc. American calendar, though - perhaps I should do a British calendar version and send it to my mother. She would appreciate the bible verses. I made the prototype with some HP LED dot matrix displays I had laying around, HDSP2503 - simple parallel interface - but they cost nearly $50 each and the clock needs two, so my attention turned to the VFDs.

I considered using compression, but I had 64k of flash available and found it difficult to fill it up even uncompressed. Besides, see comment above about number of available lifetimes.

Here's a pic of the HDSP clock. I have a bag of Noritake graphic VFDs that I rescued from a dumpster, complete display, serial/parallel. I haven't quite decided what to do with them. It seems sacrilegious to waste them on text or numbers. Maybe I'll do a clock with rolling graphic numbers like an odometer.

Pete

 

Pete,

[Dylan Distasio]

Thank you both for the very creative ideas. I'm hoping to find some
inspiration in them as a staring point in one of my own projects (when
I finally get around to actually building something from scratch
again). I'm still a beginner and have really only hand crafted a
single digit numitron clock on my own. I'm hoping to move on to a
VFD next and this type of thing would go well with the IV-17s. I also
have a Noritake I got as a free sample that I might play around with
also.

[petehand]

Grahame,

Your comment nagged at me, so I did include Huffman compression and got nearly 100k of text down to 48k. I wrote a program to take a text file and output it a line at a time to a file I can directly include in my AVR code, along with the Huffman tree and a symbol table for looking up the string addresses. It took me a few days, including a 40 hour day over a weekend, but the satisfaction pays for all.

On Sunday, July 6, 2014 10:38:12 AM UTC-7, Grahame Marsh wrote:

Pete,
<snip>

[Dan Harboe Burer]

Hello  Nixiefans

 

Take a look at these pics.. can anyone here use these for a project? I have the 5 modules I pulled from a Danish built DISA counter (which looked very much like a HP  clone)

The counter itself was not salvageable.. too much damage to the cabinet, all tubes were stripped.. so I saved these 5 display modules – and their mating connectors!

My guess would be they need 4 ECC82 each to awaken..

 

Of course I could put them up on ebay.. but I will just let you guy get a chance.. Price?

Something funny in trade. 

Make me an offer – I will pay shipping for these in retur for whatever we aree in

 

Greetings from (a far too hot) Denmark

 

Dan

[Dan Harboe Burer]

Hi all,

 

The modules are gone

 

Kind Regards

Dan

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to neonixie-l+...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to neoni...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/DDE7152ABBAF4109A9D3BE2ADAEF0F80%40DanDims.

[gregebert]

Are the bulbs neon, or incandescent ? Someone could theoretically adapt a nixie-tube clock to drive neon bulbs and use just the shells from the modules.

[David Forbes]

These appear to be similar to the HP modules called AC-4. They use neon lamps.

I built a web page about the HP modules many years ago..

http://www.nixiebunny.com/hpac4/

[Instrument Resources of America]

The HP AC-4's were also neon. Ira.

[Dan Harboe Burer]

As far as I can see they are neon bulbs. I haven’t taken the modules themselves apart – but the tips and bases of the bulbs look like neon :)

 

Dan

 

From: gregebert

Sent: Friday, July 25, 2014 11:18 PM

To: neoni...@googlegroups.com

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to neonixie-l+...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to neoni...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/1eaacdc4-e258-47d6-8f1f-ef3e6851c4d8%40googlegroups.com.