I have six NEO-5000 seven segment neon displays which have been sitting on my shelf for years, and I've decided it time to do something with them. The main data I have on these displays is here
http://www.tubeclockdb.com/planar-neon-displays/171-neo5000-plasma-digit.html All this data originally comes from A.J., and I've found a few old messages in the group where the same data has been posted. My plan is to build a clock using 4x NEO-5000s for HH:MM and one SP-352 for the seconds. I've built a few Nixie gizmos before but never anything with Panaplex type and looking over the data for these there's a few things I don't quite understand. I thought I'd stop lurking and appeal to the collective wisdom. I'm tempted to just use direct drive (I've got several DM8880s that'd do the job) but I've found several references that say things like "must be multiplexed" or "direct drive not recommended". Why? As long as the direct drive cathode current doesn't exceed the spec for maximum average cathode current, what's the issue? Assuming multiplexing is required, then the data for the NEO-5000s specifies a duty cycle of 1/10 to 1/20. Is that really right? The spec for peak cathode current in multiplexed operation is only about 2-5x the average current, so with this duty cycle it seems like they'll be fairly dim. With a duty cycle of 1/3 I could easily meet the peak and average current specs and it seems like they'd be way brighter. They're big, bright displays and I want them to be bright in the clock, but OTOH I don't want to shorten their life, either. Thanks, Bob -- 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.
