Hello everyone!
I’m new to this group and this is my first post.
I’m looking forward to design & build a particular project with Nixie display, but since I’m really not an expert and just starting, I would very much appreciate your help & feedback. I do have some specific questions (in the end), but if you look at project goal & design principles and think of better way to do things – please comment as well!
Project goals:
A Raspberry PI controlled Nixie display, with some additional LED indicators for weather conditions. Nixie display will be used to display the time or temperature or humidity, depending on settings.
Main assumptions:
1. 6 lamps: IN-19V ("+"/"-"), 4 x IN-14 ("0" - "9" + 2 dots), IN-19A ("C"/"%")
2. Ability to control Nixie brightness (by Raspberry PI)
3. LED RGB back-light under each tube, with color & brightness controlled (by Raspberry PI)
The look I want to achieve:
Design principles:
1. As much as possible – use the components available on the market. I’d like to avoid designing PCBs, avoid designing custom circuits, minimize soldering, etc. I understand I’ll have to do those things to some extent, but being a newbie, I want to minimize room for failure or issues.
2. A single visible power supply for the whole thing, from 230V AC outlet, driving all 6 nixies (180V, 30mA), Raspberry (5V, 3A) and the LEDs.
3. All components should be ideally driven by Raspberry I2C bus interface, using which I could control separately: displayed value of each tube, brightness of each tube, color & brightness of each LED. I think this is the easiest and most versatile approach (but again – looking for confirmation / other suggestions)
Questions to start with:
1. Are there any available to be purchased components, which you could recommend, fulfilling above design principles & goals? Right now, I have the Raspberry & the tubes, but nothing “in between” J
2. Do you think my idea of controlling all components via I2C bus is a good idea? I want to go for the easiest and most versatile approach.
3. Are there anywhere existing sockets for IN-14 / IN-19 tubes? Or will I have to solder to tubes to whatever components I select?
Thanks a lot for your help!
Does it have to be RPi? There are many options available for arduino, but for some reason not many for the RPi (that I know of).
I think all options already include the 5V/3.3V and HV power-supply.
Here someone uses an RPi 0 with the Arduinix shield/HAT :
https://hackaday.io/project/16467-raspberry-pi-zero-nixie-clock
Concerning the power supply:
I have never seen a nixie-object where more than one voltage supply was outside.
Especially the HV supply is always close to the board.
I am still searching for a universal nixie (direct) drive board which has just connections for the cathodes, 5V or 12V supply, HV supply control (output enable?) and one of the serial interfaces compatible with arduino and RPi.
Swissnixies Sunix - S comes very close :
http://www.swissnixie.com/index.php?go=sunixs
http://www.ebay.com/itm/131846790948?_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT
http://www.ebay.com/sch/vfdclock/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_ipg=&_from=
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Starting with an environment reasonably similar to Arduino would make an easier and more comfortable learning curve.
UPDATE: I have my RasPi Zero W running nicely as a headless system w/ Raspian.
I'm satisfied to the point I wont pursue Arduino anymore.
Having a $10 Linux-based platform that I can log into wirelessly & remotely is really incredible.
Photo here, and short video posted to YouTube at https://youtu.be/OjQeW67viXw
- Paul
The real question now is: How long can a raspi run without crashing ?
Eventually I will start logging usage of each segment, on each tube, and use that for depoisoning. Since it's a micro SD (flash) filesystem, which has limited write-cycles, I have to be careful about how often I store runtime information. Syncing daily to the same file (appending) could cause wearout after several years if the OS doesn't incorporate some form of levelling. Doing it every 3-4 days should get me about 100 years of logging if the flash has 10K write-cycle endurance. Not that I will be around then to do anything with that