[lerneaen hydra] sent in his version of the ubiquitous nixie clock. Rather than gut his counter for the tubes, he used an Atmel Mega88 to pulse the clock to display the time. Additionally, the LED matrix on the case outputs the time in binary. His past projects are worth checking out. He milled the case on his converted CNC mill, retrofitted an old CNC lathe and seems to enjoy putting supercaps in everything (including his clock).
4 thoughts on “Nixie Counter Clock”
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I don’t understand his circuit here:
http://www.lerneaenhydra.net/images/rsgallery/original/scematic.png
It seems there’s lots of things there which waste significant power, especially the design of the circuit to prevent the capacitors overcharging. It seems he’s decided to always load the dynamo, which is going to make it much harder to ride the bike.
mattos – I decided to waste energy because I needed something quick to make it work and because I have one of those new generators with rare-earth magnets that’s mounted in the center of the front wheel, I can’t tell when it’s on or off, there’s no noticable drag at all.
Hahah Nixie Tubes. Ya know in the Navy we still use those for the display on our fathometers.
Ah, non-destructive. Just as well that I have loads of nixie tube frequency counters. They fit well on a bookshelf.