>Cool. I've bought tubes from the first seller also (not IN18's) and they were good....that's a pretty fancy de-poisoner! You should consider putting that out there...I'd be interested...;-)
Yes, I put a lot of work in it.
You can switch it between manual and automatic mode.
In manual mode, you can set voltage, current and digit directly on the device.
In automatic mode, the digits are controlled by an Arduino compatible ESP8266 WiFi "Wemos D1 mini pro".
I can set, e.g. run digits 2,3,5 and 8 for 90 sec. each, loop 10 times and then send me a push notification to my mobile phone.
After the routine, I can set it to turn off or cycle through all digits 0-9 infinitely with a 10s interval.
But the time to build this thing is nothing someone would pay me. :)
And for mass production there are too less people interested in such a thing.
There are already similar devices on the market at a reasonable price:
>have you contacted Pete at all?
Yes, I already contacted Pete, that's what he replied:
This is classic cathode poisoning. IN-18 tubes suffer more than most tubes in this respect. The problem is that some batches are perfect and run for years without issue, and others degrade very quickly.
I just wonder why this happens to nearly all of my tubes.
>it's almost as if the tubes are being under-driven
As mentioned, they only draw about 4.5mA, which might be too less, as the minimal current, according the the datasheet is 4mA, nominal is 6mA and maximum 8mA.
What I notices is, that soon after I purchased my kit, the anode resistor was changed to a lower value, from 10kOhm to 8.2kOhm.
>a gas pressure leak
That's what I also thought. But, again: all of them?
>you might want to tweak it up to 180v
Are you sure? As what I read, you should never drive the IN-18 Nixies above the specified 170V.