Comments on: Disposable camera Nixie tube driver

By: disposable cameras hater

disposable cameras hater — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:50:06 +0000

About the best thing you can do with a disposable camera is take it too bits and then throw the bits away as they cannot take decent photos with any of them

Regards
Adrian

By: cameron20020

cameron20020 — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 12:05:12 +0000

@rivetgeek

depending on where he was zapped, and how much the capacitor was charged, its very possible he zapped his friend. human skin can have resistance anywhere between roughly 300kohm, to 10Mohm (ballpark figures)

long story short, the capacitor wont be instantly discharged from a quick load measuring in at around 300kohm being put accross it

the shock would just be less intense unless he did what he did and moistened things

By: max

max — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 11:50:37 +0000

@_rivetgeek

Seconded

By: rivetgeek

rivetgeek — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 02:15:14 +0000

@_matt

if you got shocked, it discharged. Hence no shock to friend. Your lie is full of fail.

By: _matt

_matt — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 21:15:09 +0000

i don’t know anything about nixie tubes, so why was 3 on top, was it just a standard thing?

i remember ripping a camera apart, and getting shocked even though there were no batteries. then i get it open and see the massive capacitor taking up the side of the camera. i proceeded to rip it out, lick my hand, slap my friend, then press the capacitor onto the wet area. fun times….

By: localroger

localroger — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 21:10:53 +0000

This is brilliant — the HV is the usual problem with Nixie projects, as you either have to line power them (dangerous) or find an isolation transformer (not too common nowadays). It should be straightforward to look at the Nixie specs or just measure the current draw and put a resistor in to drop the voltage to 150V, and the flash stepup is designed to be shorted across a huge electrolytic capacitor so it won’t have any problem with a Nixie’s modest draw.

By: Orv

Orv — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 17:31:17 +0000

@fyre007: My guess is there are actually two wires, but you can’t see the other in the photo. Nixies have one electrode shaped like each digit, so it would only take two wires to light a single digit.

Trivia: In advertisements of the day, Nixies were usually shown with the number “3″ lit. This was because 3 was at the top of the electrode stack and looked best. Some of the other numbers, like 0, have a forest of thin support wires in front of them that cast shadows.

By: EdZ

EdZ — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 16:47:29 +0000

2 wires. Looks like a great way to test out nixie tubes when sorting through a pile for duds, but I wouldn’t want to use it to drive them on a long term basis. I have no idea what voltage and current it’s pumping out, and how long it will survive under continuous use. Plus you need to buy a PSU to power the cameras (or eat through a bunch of batteries), so you may as well buy a HV nixie PSU anyway. They’re not particularly expensive.

By: Kenny

Kenny — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 16:22:46 +0000

Back when I was young and took everything apart I could get my hands on, I found this fact out the hard way. bzzz. Never did that again :)

By: Fyre007

Fyre007 — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 16:10:22 +0000

I was gonna comment on the instructables site, but this one is shown in the photo..

convenient, drawing an ’8′
how does it light with only one wire running to it?