Nixie and Angel wrestling...

This afternoon we have been waiting waiting on something to happen or tomorrow to hurry up and get here so we could head to the hospital.  In the middle of this waiting our two dogs have been keeping us entertained with some fulfilled  tug of war and wrestling.  Erin and I were actually laughing at how our two dogs have become unlikely best friends.  Nixie is a little miniature schnauzer with a huge personality and Angel is a very loving and clumsy boxer.  Typically you would think that the little one would annoy the big one and that their would be clashes.  But these two are best friends who hang out and play all the time.  They are a fun pair for sure and we are lucky to have them!

Also we’re welcoming to the team Justin whos going to be doing our sound design! He’s got a bio on the team page so go check him out!

Going into production hopefully next week eeeee!
Nixie x

It’s not often that we see something so brilliantly simple we’re left reaching for our checkbooks while wondering exactly how we never though of that before. [Jürgen]‘s edge-lit Nixie display is one of those builds.

[Jürgen]‘s modern take on a Nixie display uses ten laser-engraved pieces of acrylic to emulate a Nixie numerical display. In the base of the display are 10 LEDs, each shining onto the side of a piece of acrylic. When an LED lights up, you can clearly see the corresponding number. Edge-lit displays are old hat, but talking about the possibility of an RGB Nixie-style display is really neat.

The build was inspired by an antique edge-lit display that performed the same function as the ever-popular Nixie tube with 10 miniature light bulbs and light pipes. The ancient edge-lit displays came in a rectangular enclosure that worked very well for panel-mount uses, but [Jürgen] stuck to a more traditional cylindrical orientation. All we want to know is when a manufacturer in China is going to start building these. Check out the demo of the edge-lit Nixie after the break.

There’ll be more to come for Ed, and also for Olga’s apartment!

Nixie

We succeeded in spectacular fashion. From our little village just inland we could hear the maroons go off when the lifeboats were called out; we could drive just up the road to a wide flat beach surrounded by rugged Cornish cliffs. We had our fill of that wild sound, but I never felt it was quite me.

Then my daughter became more than idea; a pending arrival. And we took ourselves away from that far-flung peninsula to the mariner’s city of Plymouth, and even further: to the foothills of Dartmoor.

We settled in a town called Ivybridge, and I met the sound which enriches my life like music: the sound of a lusty Dartmoor river.

The Erme is an ancient source of wellbeing for the people of Devon. It powered mills which made the area prosperous. It rises in the centre of South Dartmoor near old tin mines; it follows the ancient Abbot’s Way and passes bronze age enclosures and tin miner’s huts on its way into the little town of Ivybridge.

Imagine parking your car in a municipal car park and pottering along to the ticket machine to pay your money. And then, taking your bags, you head towards the tiny town high street, and become aware of a roaring, a great sonorous energy forming the backdrop to the comings and goings of the villagers with their shopping bags and pushchairs and sensible shoes.

To get to the town you must traverse a wooden arched bridge, under which bubble the cauldron-white waters which have careered here from the moor.

On a lazy Summer’s day it is loud. But after torrential rain it bellows, like some broiling serpent, through the town.

I used to stand there, after a storm, absorbing the manic sound energy, the white-water foam over the lucent green-black rocks. When Maddie was born, she sat in her pushchair and listened. I would long for her to tell me what she thought, but you can’t hurry child development. She absorbed the natural mayhem, and who knows what her tiny unconscious made of it. The river is buried deep in her being.

Man lives by rivers for so many reasons: for transport, for food, for leisure. But I would posit that it fulfils one more invisible function: it feeds the soul of the settlement.

When I was a student I was, for the first and only time, trapped in the centre of a city. I did not like it. My soul yearned for something wide and flat which promised something beyond brick walls. The experience made me weep for those who have no choice.

Two rivers rescued me. Rivers which weave through the most stunning landscapes and end up meeting their end in the heart of an industrial landscape. The Test and the Itchen enchant tourists for miles and miles but by the time they passed my back window they were grey and broad. Folks call the expanse Southampton Water.

I could look out of my pokey student Victorian terrace on the hill above, and see the space. And the river running nearby eased the city claustrophobia.

Our stories have accorded the rivers their own spirits.

Take the water horse, white like the rapids or gleaming green-black. It goes by many names across the Germanic world: kelpie, nuggle, glashtin.

Beautiful beyond words, its mane is always dripping wet and its skin like a seals. It hides with one eye above water to watch for passers-by; or poses as a little lost pony, tempting unfortunates to get on to its back. Once mounted, the rider is doomed. He or she is carried into the water, never to return to land.

The Nixie are immortalised as Wagner’s Rhine Maidens. We meet them in Wagner’s Das Rheingold as guardians of treasure hidden in the Rhein. They are the ones who labour to keep the gold free of a curse.

And enchanting and chilling are the Rusalka: fish-women who lived in the flowing weed at the bottom of rivers. At night, it was said in Slavic traditions, the women would come out and dance in the fields beside the rivers. Good-looking men should beware: the women would mesmerise them, and lure them to a watery grave.

Look at a river and, for some of us, words are not enough. Our hearts fill full to bursting, and stories must follow to bridge the gap between the magnitude of our awe and our ability to express what we see.

I am left wondering who is the spirit of the little river which flows from the rocky heights of Dartmoor, through my heart, and onwards out to the open sea.

nixie

Ive been working on some colour tests for the female character of the film. Initially the design was in a kind of plain brown colour. I though that i should focus on some popular cat colours, unfortunately there are no pink or green cats in circulation

I tend to paint with quite heavy shading so this test is fairly dark compared to alex’ previous photoshop tests. I used a downloaded watercolour brush. I’m thinking maybe the odd coloured things contrast with the green of the picture?

Over and Out……. Nixie

If there’s one thing that I really like it’s a good clock kit. Once constructed, they can be many things, including:

• a point of differentiation from other items in the room;
• a reminder of the past (nixie tubes!) or possible visions of the future;
• the base of something to really annoy other people;
• a constant reminder to get back to work;
• a source of satisfaction from having made something yourself!

So just for fun I have attempted to find and list as many interesting and ‘out of the ordinary’ kits as possible, and ignored the simple or relatively mundane kits out there. If you are in the clock kit business and want a mention, let me know. So in no particular order, we have:

adafruit industries “ice tube” clock

Based around a vintage Soviet-era vacuum IV-18 type fluorescent display, the ice tube clock is a rare kit that includes a nice enclosure which keeps you safe from the high voltages as well as allowing the curious to observe your soldering skills. I reviewed this kit almost a year ago and the clock is still working perfectly. Here is a video of the ice tube clock in action:

After some travelling meeting various people it seems that quite a few of us have an ice tube clock. There is something quite mesmerising about the display, perhaps helping to recall memories of our youth in the 1970s and 80s.

nootropic design Defusable Clock Kit

As recently reviewed, this kit allows you to build a simulated ‘countdown’ timer for a hypothetical explosive device that also doubles as a clock with an alarm. For example:

Whatever you do, don’t make a ‘fake bomb’ and leave it out in public! Only bad things could happen

ogilumen nixie tube kits

Not a clock kit as such, however they have made doing it yourself very easy with their power supply and IN-12A nixie board kits. We made one ourselves in a previous review, as shown below:

Alan Parekh’s Multimeter Clock Kit

This is certainly one from left field – using the analogue multimeters to display hours, minutes and seconds. See Alan describe his kit in this video:

Certainly something different and would look great on the wall of any electronics-themed area or would easily annoy those who dislike the status-quo of clock design.

akafugu VFD Modular Clock

The team at akafugu have created a modular baseboard/shield kit which holds a shield containing four IV-17 alphanumeric nixie tubes to create your own clock or display system:

Unlike some of the other nixie tube kits the firmware has been made public and can be modified at will. In the future different display shields will be available to extend the use of the kit.

tubeclock.com kits

This site has two kits available, one using either four or six Soviet-era IN-12 type nixie tubes:

… and another kit using the Soviet-era IN-14 nixie tubes:

You have to hand it to the former Soviet Union – they knew how to over-produce nixie tubes. One rare example where we can benefit from a command economy!

evil mad science clocks

The certainly not evil people have two clock kits, the first being the Bulbdial Clock Kit:

This uses a unique ring of LEDs around the circumference of the clock face to create shadows to mark the time. It is also available in a range of housing and face styles. Their other kit of interest is the Alpha Clock Five:

The photo of this clock doesn’t do it justice – the alphanumeric displays are 2.3″ tall, making this one huge clock. It also makes use of a Chronodot real-time clock board, which contains a temperature-controlled oscillator  which helps give it an accuracy of +-/ 2 minutes per year. Furthermore you can modify this easily using an FTDI cable and the Arduino IDE with some extra software. Would be great for model railways (or even a real railway station) or those insanely conscious about the time.

Kabtronics Clock Kits

This organisation has several clock kits which span a range of technology from the later part of the twentieth century. These guys can only be true clock enthusiasts! Starting with the 1950s, they have their Nixie-Transistor Clock:

Look – no integrated circuits, leaving the kit true to the era. If you need to hide from someone for a weekend, building this would be a good start. Next we move onto the 1960s and the Transistor Clock:

The 1960s brought with it LEDs so they are now used in this kit, however the logic is still all analogue electronics. However next we can move to the 1970s, and finally save some board space with the TTL Clock:

This would still be fun to assemble but somewhat less punishing for those who don’t enjoy solder fumes that much. However you still have a nice kit and something to be proud of. Finally, the last in the line is the 1980s-themed Surface-Mount Technology Clock:

So here we have a microcontroller, SMT components, and a typical reduction in board size. Their range is an excellent way of demonstrating the advances in technology over the years.

The GPS FLW Display Clock

Wow – this clock makes use of huge Burroughs B7971 15-segment nixie tube displays and a GPS receiver to make a huge, old-style/new-tech clock. Check out the demonstration video:

This thing is amazing. And it is actually cheaper to buy a fully-assembled version (huh). The same organisation also offers another GPS-controlled clock using IN-18 nixie tubes:

Again, it isn’t inexpensive – however the true nixie tube enthusiasts will love it. This clock would look great next to a post-modern vintage hifi tube amplifier. Moving forward to something completely different now, we have the:

adafruit industries monochron®

Almost the polar opposite of the nixie-tube clocks, the monochron uses an ATmega328 microcontroller and a 128 x 64 LCD module to create some interesting clock effects. For example:

Many people have created a variety of displays, including space invaders and the pong game simulation. The clock also includes the laser-cut acrylic housing which provides a useful and solid base for the clock.

Spikenzie Labs Solder : Time™ watch kit

Technically this is a watch kit, however I don’t think that many people would want to walk around wearing one – but it could be used in more permanent or fixed locations. Correct me if I’m wrong people. However in its defence it is a very well designed kit that is easy to solder and produces a nice clock:

It uses a separate real-time controller IC to stay accurate, and the design However this would be a great suggestion as a gift for a younger person to help them become interesting in electronics and other related topics. The asm firmware is also available for you to modify using Microchip MPLAB software if that takes your fancy.

Velleman Kits

The Velleman company has a range of somewhat uninspiring clock kits, starting with the Scrolling/Rolling LED Clock:

… the 2¼” 7-Segment Digital Clock:

This clock includes the housing and also accepts an optional temperature sensor, and therefore can display this as well. There is also the aptly-named – Digital LED Clock:

It tells the time and would be useful in a 1980s-era idea of the future movie set. The final velleman clock kit is the Jumbo Single-Digit Clock:

In all fairness this one looks quite interesting – the LED display is 57mm tall and the time is display one digit at a time. It is powered by a PIC16F630 however the firmware is proprietary to velleman.

Nocrotec Nixie Clocks

This company has a range of kits using nixie tubes and numitrons (low voltage incadescent displays in tubes). One particularly lovely kit is their IN-8 Blue Dream kit:

The blue glow at the base of the nixie tubes is due to an LED mounted at the bottom of the tube. Another aesthetically-pleasing kit is their Little Blue Something nixie clock. Check out their demonstration video:

nixiekits.eu

More IN-12 nixie clocks from Germany, the first being the Manuela_HR. You can buy the kit without an enclosure, or choose from the ‘office’ style:

… or this funky number:

You can specify it with RGB LEDs which colour-cycle to provide the effect shown above. For those not too keen you can also buy the kits pre-assembled. Their other kit is the Sven:

It is available with IN-8 or IN-14 nixie tubes. The design quality of the enclosure is outstanding, a lot of effort has been made to produce a complete kit that “won’t look like a kit” when completed.

Minty Time

This is a small binary clock kit that fits in an Altoids tin:

This is a nice little kit as it is inexpensive, easy to make and very well documented. You could also mount this in a variety of flat surfaces, limited only by your imagination.

The Chronulator

Here we find a unique design that uses analogue panel meters in a similar method to the multimeter clock detailed previously. Here is an example of the completed kit:

The kit contains the electronics and meters (or you can delete the meters for a discount if you already have some) however the housing is up to you. Furthermore, this kit has some of the best instructions (.pdf) I have ever seen. They are a credit to the organisation. Our final clock kit is the …

Denkimono

This is another clock kit in the style of ‘suspicious bomb timer’-looking – and it pulls this off quite well. Consider the following video demonstration:

As well as a normal clock it can function as an alarm, stopwatch, countdown timer and lap counter. The instructions (.pdf) are well written and easy to follow. Furthermore the Denkimono is also well priced for the kit and delivery.

Hopefully this catalogue of clock kits was of interest to you. If you have found some other kits to add to the list, or wish to disagree or generally comment about this article please do so via the comment section below. This article was not sponsored in any way.

Nixies and VFDs are great displays, but when using them you’ve got to deal with some fairly high voltages, at least for the micro projects we see on Hack a Day. Luckily, there’s another ancient technology that can be driven at tiny voltages. [Kenneth] put up a great tutorial on Numitron tubes to show the Internet how to get these guys working.

Numitron tubes are like Nixies, but instead of the ten number-shaped filaments in each Nixie, Numitrons are old-school seven-segment displays. [Kenneth] picked up a few on ebay and the seller was kind enough to include a Russian data sheet. Each filament in his IV-9 Numitrons required about 20mA to light up, perfect for the constant current LED drivers [Kenneth] picked up

The test circuit consisted of an ATtiny2313 and an A6278 LED driver. The code on the ATtiny cycles the digits 0 through 9. This is sent through the LED driver and lights up the tiny filaments inside the tube. Check out the video after the break to see the Numitron in action

If you’re like [Richard], you’ve got a few really rare components lying around. Maybe it’s a very weird micro or a really tiny CRT, but eventually you’ve got to build something with these parts. When [Richard] decided to put some ITS1A neon display tubes to use, he fell back to the old standby – a really awesome clock.

Unlike the lowly Nixie tube, the ITS1A tube is weird. It’s a neon seven-segment display that can be controlled directly from the pins of a microcontroller. It does this with the help of seven tiny thyratrons in each segment. Even though this tube has neon, the display isn’t the familiar neon orange-red. The tube emits a lovely green with the help of a phosphor coating.

With a single digit already incorporated into [Richard]‘s clock, he needed four indicators for the hours and minutes. After a failed experiment with a crazy 4-color, 16-pixel Melz ITM2-M display, he moved on to a simpler MTX90 thyratron indicator.

Using the same control scheme as his earlier numitron clock, Richard had a PCB made and wired everything up. The seven-segment tube indicates the value, and the indicator tubes indicates the position of the digit in the XX:XX standard. A very cool  build with parts you don’t see coming around often.

[Matt Evans] achieves a total win with his Nixie clock. Not only does he have the benefit of the retro display hardware, but he really catches our eye with the enclosure he built for it.

The project had its genesis when he came across a set of the Nixie Tubes in a surplus store. This was back in 2007, and with parts in hand he built the high-voltage driver circuit and a control board. The thing kept time, but was housed in a temporary case that was a bit rough looking. There it sat, waiting to become the focus of his attention once again.

When it did finally come time to build a proper case [Matt] started with a small sheet of recycled copper. He made the cutouts and bends by hand. He mentions that it’s a little uneven; maybe, but we don’t think it detracts from the design. Some black screen (like would be used on a porch door) covers the openings, giving texture and contrast to the facade.

We love the look, and the ATmega48 with a clock crystal for the RTC functions should make this a reliable time source.

You can pick this kit up for $239 with the Nixie tubes and $199 with standard LEDs. You can also purchase a handsome plaque, suitable for wall placement in your electronics den.

Warning: Don’t buy this if you’re a fly-by-night solderer. As the creator notes:

This kit is for advanced, experienced builders. You need to have an oscilloscope, a voltmeter, and an inquisitive mind tempered with patience.

Product Page via retrothing

a little video I made of some of Nixie‘s one year old tricks.
I’m that annoying auntie, I know. Shhh.

PS: Vegas, LA, & PDX in 6 days!!!

PPS:

…treat? I cannot believe I just paired this up with my niece’s video.

Nixie & DJ C ROCK! (DJ Lance Rock’s cousin)

The suit’s material against slightly– I’m going to say it, moist human skin makes for an unpleasant smell. I took it off and smelled my under arms to make sure and it definitely was not me! Phew. It’s hard work being a clown for around 25 or more 6 months – 10 year olds. Though, I enjoyed the not so strange looks I got when I busted out some of my bgirl skills which consisted of the start of a 6 step and… that’s it. I waltzed with Nix. So well rounded.

Definitely the show stopper, designed by google & me.
Created from scratch by Miss Angelica Reece.
Mmhmm SCRATCH! I present to you Nixie’s 1st birthday cake.

This lady kneaded fondant for hoursss & slaved over this masterpiece for 2 days. Girl had to holler at me for some help. I couldn’t even handle 15 minutes of that devil fondant so I was useless. Until! It came to cutting out the eyes, writing up the banner & rolling up Moono’s ribbed body. Oh baby. It came in 3 flavors from the bottom to the top: chocolate, mocha, lemon, & vanilla! Every layer, I kid you not was delicious. Bums for you if you didn’t go. :)

If your stomach is churning from the jealousy go ahead and book Miss Angelica for your loved one’s next party! Adult parties even, she can hang. For now you can reach her here. I’ve been bothering her about creating a blog :) .

It’s like baby Jesus was born or something.

Nixie was sleeping when it was time to blow out the candles

Nixie says salamat for celebrating with us! xo

(Stay tuned for a new video coming up!)

[radmeck] on the ez-robot.com forums came up with a great use for Nixie tubes. Instead of using Nixies for clocks, or indicating values, he used them as robot eyes.

He used the arduNIX Arduino-powered Nixie tube driver to power the tubes. [radmeck] was very impressed with the arduNIX kit. The kit is able to drive eight Nixies or eighty neon bulbs, but there’s no word from [radmeck] on additional Nixies or neons in his build. The eventual goal of the project is to rebuild the Omnibot while adding more servos and motors. The EZ-B robot controller will be used to control the robot, something we’ve seen before.

[radmeck]‘s Omnibot looks a lot better after the retr0bright bath, and with Nixie eyes its even more adorable. While the Omnibot didn’t live up to the original promise of impressing your girlfriend, Nixie tube eyes will give you some blog cred.

Check out the video of the much-improved Omnibot after the break.