NickoScope32 — a modern CRT vector clock, drawn with an electron beam and LUA and AI Powered

[Nikolay Miroshnichenko]

Hi everyone. First, a small disclaimer: I'm a beginner, and this is only four months of development — so please don't judge too harshly. 🙂 I'm sharing it early precisely because I'd genuinely love your feedback, critique and suggestions — and if anyone would like to join in and help the project grow down the road, I'd be truly happy to have you.

It began as a simple "oscilloscope clock" idea and turned into this. Everything is drawn as pure X-Y vectors on a CRT — no pixels — and the whole thing is now driven end-to-end by AI.

What it does:

• 🕐 20+ vector effects — digital & analog clocks, a Saturn particle clock, Matrix rain, teletype, a vintage VU meter, a spectrum analyzer, Lissajous figures…
• ✈️ Live air-traffic radar (real aircraft via OpenSky) + a split-flap airport departures board
• 🧠 NickoScopeLua — a tiny scripting language for the tube: a new clock face is a script, not new firmware → any number of clocks, any style
• ⚡ Beam OS — a deterministic vector-beam compiler: continuous geometry (arcs, Béziers) → synchronized beam motion, uniform brightness for free, fail-to-blank safety
• 🔮 On-glass AI oracle streamed live, plus weather and full voice + smart-home control
• 🖥️ Two brains: ESP32-S3 (IoT bridge) + STM32 H7 render engine (>200 MHz), AD8056 deflection amps, electrostatic X-Y CRT
• 🎮 Games incoming — Star Wars first, then the vector arcade classics the tube was born to play

Come take a look — it's all open:

• ▶ Try the emulator live in your browser (1:1 twin of the render engine): https://nickoscope.github.io/NickoScope32-Main/
• 🎬 5-minute presentation (screen · voice · light, all in sync): https://nickoscope.github.io/NickoScope32-Main/watch.html
• 📦 Source & README: https://github.com/NickoScope/NickoScope32-Main

Any thoughts, critique or ideas are very welcome — and the door is open for collaborators. Thanks for reading! 🔧

[Tom Katt]

Wow!  That is really impressive!  It's going to take me a bit to let it all soak in lol.

I love crt projects and have a half baked project on my desk now based on a Teensy 4 with much of the foundation 'borrowed' from David Forbes scope clock, but running my own code.  I have been struggling a bit with the Z axis and how to control the crt...  I am torn between some kind of direct grid control vs an in series capacitor to the grid.  Either way, I'd be interest to see how you managed the Z axis - especially 7 bits of briteness.

I have very recently got into the oscilloscope music thing and have been playing around with Osci-Render ( osci-render).  

The AI integration is also very clever (and modern lol).

Good job!

[Tom Katt]

I checked out your github site looking for more information, but did not find much there.  Have you published your schematics and code for this project?  I'm interested how you managed the crt power supply and drive...

Thanks!