Comments on: Arduino nixie shield

By: David

David — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 19:44:31 +0000

Whoa, nice board!
If you really get excited you can string a few of these digit pairs together. Arduino-friendly modules with PCB Eagle files:
http://www.ogilumen.com/nixie-2xd2x-p-92.html

By: robotpirate brad

robotpirate brad — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 14:30:00 +0000

@the moogle – $45 includes shipping, we do that to cover the orders out of state as well as in the us.

@disapointed – We are discussing releasing the schematics, probably will. We’re just getting started, so we’re ironing things like that out.

@eric – Yeah, we used eagle, but it was because this was the first circuit I have ever laid out. I enjoyed it a great deal, tho. Using eagle’s autorouter to start with, I went back and hand traced them in eagle one at a time to make it look better. Me being the artist in the team, I had to make the board layout look just “so.”
Thanks for the kind words, tho. I appreciate the comments.

@paul – I know that depending on the timing capacitors, we’ve gotten her up over 200 volts, but we were only shooting for 180. I reckon she might do 400. We’ll be probably posting schematics soon once I art them up.

@reza – check back in a few days, I’ll have time to post more on the site and the forums about the schematics.

By: eric

eric — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 09:48:50 +0000

@reza Ah, I forgot about Altium. I’ve heard good things about that, but as you pointed out it’s very expensive (though that student price seems reasonable). Good to know someone finally took care of that problem!

By: reza

reza — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 05:53:06 +0000

@eric there’s nothing wrong with a good autorouter, just not eagle’s. I’ve been using Altium Designer’s autorouter, and it’s amazing. Great results, and I’m very happy with it. Though I got the student version for $133 vs the $14,000 retail price. After using it for some weeks, I have to say that it’s worth $14k (not that I have that much to spend on software).

As far as the design is concerned, it looks like they’re not using a dedicated IC to produce their voltage, rather using a clock from the 555 to drive the LC circuit to get the voltage. I would like to see how that part of it works. I’ve been meaning to work on some VFD that I got, but it’s low on the queue.

-reza

By: paul

paul — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 05:04:00 +0000

if this has the potential to output 400 volts i would be interested in developing one to drive coilgun projects …

of course there aren’t any schematics at all… or and proper specs…

By: eric

eric — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 01:45:42 +0000

Nixie tubes are filled with awesome sauce.

One thing, though. The designers used the EAGLE autorouter. I don’t hold it against them, we all do that when first learning, and it looks like these guys were pretty new to designing something for manufacture. Nothing wrong with that :)

I just wanna point out to everyone who may be designing their own boards, please practice and route your boards by hand! It produces a much cleaner looking board that is easier to manufacture and debug. This project is really neat and I’m not knocking these guys, *everybody* uses the autorouter when they’re first designing boards, including myself. Just my two cents. Neat stuff!

As mentioned before on HaD, check out sparkfun’s Design for Manufacture guide, found here: http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/tutorial_info.php?tutorials_id=115

By: disapointed...

disapointed... — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 23:42:50 +0000

What a disapointment; they call it “Open-Source”, but no schmatic, no design files, just example code if you buy their product. Hardly what I would consider a hack, or something worthy of Hack-A-Day…

By: The Moogle

The Moogle — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 23:38:04 +0000

Yikes! 45$ for a kit? not tubes? + shipping?

at most the board should be 15$ and the parts 10$ at most