IN-13 power supply

[artg...@gmail.com]

I'm building a device with 2 IN-9 and 2 IN-13.

I'm looking for a compact, efficient, battery-powered supply for  it. I can see several possibles on ebay (it can be just the supply, doesn't need to include modulator) but don't know how they compare.

I'm assuming that the supplies made for el-wire are too low voltage and possibly too low current, and I want a nixie supply at 140VDC or more. Is that right ?

-adrian

[Mac Doktor]

On Nov 19, 2024, at 8:38 AM, artg...@googlemail.com <artg...@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm looking for a compact, efficient, battery-powered supply for  it. I can see several possibles on ebay (it can be just the supply, doesn't need to include modulator) but don't know how they compare.

I'm assuming that the supplies made for el-wire are too low voltage and possibly too low current, and I want a nixie supply at 140VDC or more. Is that right ?

The rated voltage is 140V but I've seen higher. Have you seen this?

https://threeneurons.wordpress.com/nixie-power-supply/

Note the current. The IN-13 can be driven with an MPSA42 but an IN-9 will need something like an MJE340.

As for the HV power supply, there are plenty on eBay but making it battery operated may require an extra gadget. They're dime a dozen these days.

This is off the top of my head. My apologies if you've already gotten this far.

Terry Bowman, KA4HJH
"The Mac Doctor"

https://www.astarcloseup.com

"Would you like to see the relevant data?"—343 Guilty Spark, Halo 2

[Adrian Godwin]

Thanks, that's useful data. I've seen the Russian datasheets but not really thought about them yet.

I saw there were a bunch of options though those specs will narrow it down a bit. But there any that are known to be good (or bad) ?

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[Max Di Noi]

Hi Adrian,

What battery are you planning to use? Do you know battery voltage and power? So to check that inrush current is not too high for the battery, or it'll get damaged in time. I have done plenty of tests for my nixie watch and nixie clock power supply. 

I have this power supply which works extremely well and with a battery too. I use it to power 6x Dalibor tubes plus the two Dalibor colons nixies. Link below. 

You are welcome to return it if it doesn't work. It will work for your requirements. I'm in the UK. 

Check out High Voltage DC Power Supply Module Suit Nixie Tubes 3.7-15V Input 100-230V Out on eBay!
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/276607450691?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=Tfi9UcJ0Sd2&sssrc=2051273&ssuid=Tfi9UcJ0Sd2&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=EMAIL

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[Zachary]

I am using a NCH6300HV to power my chainable modules. In my case I'm not using a battery but on their website they have a picture of a LiPo battery powering 10 IN-18s so it should be good. I'm driving my IN-13s at 150V.

https://omnixie.com/products/nch6300hv-nixie-hv-power-module (this is the official link but you can find it for cheaper on eBay)

[Mac Doktor]

On Nov 20, 2024, at 6:14 PM, Zachary <zacharyl...@gmail.com> wrote:

I am using a NCH6300HV to power my chainable modules. 

Tell us more about these modules... 8D

Terry Bowman, KA4HJH
"The Mac Doctor"

https://www.astarcloseup.com

“...the book said something astonishing, a very big thought. The stars, it said, were suns but very far away. The Sun was a star but close up.”—Carl Sagan, "The Backbone Of Night", Cosmos, 1980

[Zachary]

So it's these little 21x24mm module I designed based on the common driver circuit for IN-13s I could find online (it should also work with IN-9s but I don't have any) with an I2C DAC. It fits on a breadboard and multiple can be chained in series with U-shaped headers https://www.mouser.ca/ProductDetail/640-BG305-06A0500LD. The space between tubes on chained modules is about 12mm.

The transistor I'm using is a MJD340, the op amp is a MCP6001 and the DAC is a MCP4706. Not all designs I found online included a potentiometer but I'm glad I put one since the tubes I got on eBay varied wildly in glow length at the same resistance.

Initially I 3D printed some little clamp holders to hold the tube in place above the board (the notch is to help align the clamp as I planned on gluing it directly on the PCB instead of using screws) but I couldn't get multiple tubes in a row to stand perfectly straight so I scrapped that. After a lot of trial and error I discovered that by far the best way to get a straight row is simply to use good old tie-wraps (which you can see in the video bellow).

This is only my second PCB (and the first one that actually works) so there are some problems I would fix if I were to do a revision. I would put the GND pad next to the 150V one instead of the SDA (which I didn't do because I couldn't find a way to route it neatly). I would also maybe make it smaller as I don't need the empty space on the top (which was to glue the clamp holder). But by far the biggest drawback with this is that the DAC I'm using has a fixed address. On the datasheet it says that there is 8 available, and it wouldn't be a problem if that was actually the case (as I am making an 8 tube spectrum analyzer), but in reality all electronic suppliers I checked only stock the first four ones :(

https://youtube.com/shorts/-yOVEOMO8Xs

It is not that big of a problem however, I will just use 2 buses with a software I2C Arduino Library. Below is a 3D render of the enclosure I plan on maybe building for it if I have the time and if its actually makeable (not sure yet).

[Richard Scales]

That's really neat.

I have had a project like this planned for several years but have not got round to doing anything much about it.

Are you willing to share your schematic and code?

I really want to build a 20 channel device to be both a spectrum analyser and to perform various graphic display routines.

I had planned to use a Teensy running with their FFT library - what are you using?

- Richard

[Adrian Godwin]

I actually want to drive 2 IN-9s and 2 IN-13s. I hadn't realised IN-9s took so much current so I might change that to 4 IN-13s. 

I've ordered one of Max's supplies to experiment with but some of those modules would save me some work too.

I want to make an animated version of the BoP helmet, with the bars above her forehead replaced by VU-meter tubes.

https://www.ministryofpinball.com/en/catalog/product/view/id/6206/s/the-machine-bride-of-pinbot-flyer/category/101/

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[Adrian Godwin]

Thanks, Max, that's pretty compact.

I haven't thought about battery yet, as I don't know how efficient the converters are. I'm looking for max 12 hours runtime, might be able to get away with less. 

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[Max Di Noi]

Adrian, shipped it this morning.

You should be fine but you may want to calculate your power requirement. 

I haven't checked the datasheet but I believe IN-9 are 12mA each and IN-13 4.5mA each, so you need 33mA if you are using 2 tubes of each. At 140V, that's 4.62 watts.

The power supply is 85% to 95% efficient, assume 85%, so you need 4.62/0.85 input power, that's 5.45 watts per hour. If it's a 12v battery, you need 450mA per hour, if I'm not mistaken... 450mA x 12 hours, that's 5.4A, assume that your battery is 80% efficient, you need 6.7A for 13 hours.

Some of the Dewalt batteries can give you that, but also you don't want to run a battery below 40%.

The power supply should work on a lithium battery too. 

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[Adrian Godwin]

These tube current are maxima, aren't they ? So the PSU needs to provide the maximum power but average battery drain might be less than 50% of that. It's basically got to run party hours but could have a limiting strategy to average lower use. 

Tool battery definitely not an option as I really want the battery to sit inside the helmet and be worn on the head :). But maybe 3 prismatic cells ?

Belt-worn battery is an option but not really desirable.

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[Mac Doktor]

On Nov 20, 2024, at 10:28 PM, Zachary <zacharyl...@gmail.com> wrote:

Not all designs I found online included a potentiometer but I'm glad I put one since the tubes I got on eBay varied wildly in glow length at the same resistance.

This is my limited experience as well. One of my IN-13s began behaving strangely after going up and down every four seconds over a period of several weeks.

Here's a site chock full of information about testing and burning them in as well as some excellent technical analysis of how they work. And some really nice photos:

https://www.saltechips.com

Terry Bowman, KA4HJH
"The Mac Doctor"

https://www.astarcloseup.com

[Zachary]

I have made a Github repository if you want to take a look at the schematic. https://github.com/ZacharyLaurin/BargraphDriver

To control it I am using an Arduino UNO with a library for the DAC and communicating from my PC via serial. My plan is for the spectrum analyzer to be some kind of desk toy, so it'll be plugged to my PC 24/7. I send the data in an array of 4 8-bit integers every 10ms. I do the "tube safety" stuff on the Arduino and the data processing on a C# application on my desktop.

For the tube safety stuff what I have is a delay between when the Arduino / DAC turns on and the when the +150V from the NCH6300HV is enabled, as well as taking a moving average of the last X points of data to smooth it out as to not go from low to really high instantly (see datasheet 1.3 usage notes).

For the actual spectrum analyzer part I found this repository online and am just building off it. https://github.com/swharden/Csharp-Data-Visualization/tree/main/projects/audio/AudioMonitor . That way it just works with whatever sound is playing on any input or output device and I don't have to read any files.

For the FFT to look good (I don't care about accuracy) I am first squaring the magnitude and then "tilting" it by multiplying by the octave, ((log(Frequency) / log(2)) - 4) (minimum 1), so that the higher frequencies have peaks as tall and noticeable as the lower ones. What I am displaying on each tube is the highest magnitude in the range of some frequency +- 10%.