Hello people. I recently discovered the Nixies, and instantly falled in love.
I decided to make my first Nixie clock, so I bought 6 IN-18 Nixies, a Nixie tester/Healer from fleabay and a Nixie clock kit from PV Electronics. The idea is to quickly build a Nixie clock (I've gotta have one!) so that I can start toying around with the Nixies. At the same time I would like to design my own clock device, so I already started to devour information about Nixies, and then, oh man, is when questions arise. First I will try to explain my objectives and backgrounds, and I will leave the questions to the end. I plan designing a clock: - *using IN-18 tubes* (the largest that I know of, if you don't take into account the ones made by Dalibor, which are unfortunately out of my reach). - *using a RasberryPI* to control everything, including NTP time synchronisation and even creating a web-based configurator for the clock. I feel very confident using linux and C/C++ as I use them (not R-PIs) on a daily basis. - *Nixie tube lifespan is an absolute priority*. I would like to design the watch so that it wouldn't require periodical tube changes, as they are very valuable and getting harder to source. I studied electronics in university (20 years ago) and since then I basically worked with computers (banking, nothing to do with electronics), but I liked very much electronics (digital electronics better), and I thought doing Nixie projects could something cool and rewarding. So, after some reading, I got some questions: - *Direct drive or multiplexing*? Multiplexing seems to be the most common solution; it uses lower power consumption, but on the other side some people complain about 'noises' and nixie flickering. Direct power supply means more power consumption and brighter Nixies, but lifespan should be reduced as well, so I think my design should use multiplexing too. I think this is an eternal debate in these forums that now I will have to face too. I think multiplexing/direct drive is not as important as... - *power supply*? For what I read, even though IN-18 are rated to be cathode powered with 180V, some recommend lower voltage ratings (170V or even 160V) in order to improve lifespan. Also there seems to be a dramatically importance in the mA constantly supplied by the power source. For what I could learn, an insuffient power supply that could not provide a stable amperage, would lead Nixies to cathode poisoning problems. I would like to control the powersource voltage from the raspberry (to increase/reduce voltage to make the Nixie brigther/dimmer), any hints on where to start looking would be appreciated. - *Other big size Nixie recommendations*? As I found trouble finding IN-18, maybe there is a better Nixie alternative, specially if I want to test and abuse the nixies. Something that can be easily found and that is not going to have supply shortage in the near future... I hope my questions don't offend anyone. I tried to answer them by myself but got a bit stuck here. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/fd3a3e31-82bc-49ae-a920-922050ab68e2%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
