David- Although I'm still a neophyte here also, I have built an Arduinix and recommend it as a good kit to learn with. If you go to the site that was posted, you can download the Arduino code for it to get an idea of how it works. I have also been using an Arduino on its own to do my own testing with a 74141 chip ad the driver connected to it. The 74141 is designed to drive nixies, and you can play with it by connecting the 5V out from the Arduino into the Vcc on the chip, and the ground to ground. The chip uses a truth table to determine which digit to light up based on whether or not you give it 5 volts (1 in the table) or 0V (ground - or 0 in the table). You can assign 4 of the digital pins on the Arduino as outputs, and then flip them on or off in combination to light the digit you want after hooking them up to the inputs on the 74141 using a breadboard. You will be hooking the outputs up to the cathodes on the nixie tube.
To define pin D5 as output, here is the code: pinMode(5, OUTPUT); To send the 74141 a 1 for the truth table (i.e. HIGH = 5V = 1 in this case): digitalWrite(5, HIGH); To set it back to 0: digitalWrite(5,LOW); You can also build a circuit yourself using just high voltage transistors instead of the IC and drive those with the Arduino. I'm sure this wouldn't be that hard either, but I have gone the 74141 route since they are cheap and plentiful on eBay. I think breadboarding out the 74141 connected to a nixie tube and an Arduino would be a great learning experience. You will however also need some kind of high voltage power supply to hook up to the anode of the nixie with a current limiting resistor. You can build these in a number of different ways, but I ended up purchasing one to get started. If you build the Ardunix, all of this stuff is already incorporated, but if you breadboard your own you will need to come up with a PSU. This link is a decent start with an Arduino circuit shown and some basic info: http://www.lucadentella.it/en/category/nixie-clock/ Here is the 74141 truth table: Input Output onDCB A0000 0000 1 10010 2 0011 30100 40101 501 10 60111 7 1000 8100 1 91010 none 1011 none110 0 none1101 none 1110 none1111 none 74141 datasheet: http://neonixie.com/ic/english-datasheet-1.jpg http://neonixie.com/ic/english-datasheet-2.jpg If you're in the US, Sparkfun sells some fairly nice male to male connectors you can use to connect the Arduino outputs to the breadboard: http://www.sparkfun.com/products/8431 Once you get comfortable with that, you can read up on the time functions on the Ardunio, including how to hook it up to a RTC chip like the ones Maxim makes: http://tronixstuff.wordpress.com/2010/05/20/getting-started-with-arduino-chapter-seven/ This is also very easy to breadboard if you use a DIP based RTC once you get the process of driving the nixie down. Multiplexing is a way to drive multiple nixies in a clock without as many pins being required, and may be something you want to investigate down the road, but I would start simple. Hope that helps! On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 6:18 PM, _David_ <david.maugr...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi, > I'd like to build a clock using an arduino, and I'm very new to > electronic. > > I could not find any diagram for this . Could anyone point me in the > right direction ? > Any advice welcome :) > David > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "neonixie-l" group. > To post to this group, send an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/neonixie-l?hl=en-GB. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To post to this group, send an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/neonixie-l?hl=en-GB.
