Neon Lamp And Other Crazy Clocks

Quick quiz, what came before transistors? Why vacuum tubes of course. If this clock doesn’t make you thankful for the luxury of integrated circuits, nothing will.

We had never heard of using Neon Lamps as logic circuits, and they definitely produce a much cooler effect when counting.
[Thanks Philippe]

And finally, we’re just suckers for a good Nixie Clock. The scope clock is also pretty interesting.

22 thoughts on “Neon Lamp And Other Crazy Clocks

  1. Neon-CR relaxation oscillators can be used as fixed dividers and some organs have been based on them, but they need stable supplies and light-tight covering. And your clock/organ can double as a cosmic ray detector. I’ve seen neon flip flops, “tri-stables” (three neons) and ring-of-five counters. A popular arrangement for counters pre-silicon was the bi-stable ahead of a ring of five, decoding as odd and even drives to globes, neons &c.

  2. That German clock was godlike.

    Hats off to the person with the right combination of multiple skillsets, patience, scrounging ability, genius, and outright insanity required to produce that work of art.

  3. You just have to love the vacuum tube clock. It is built pretty as well as wired real pretty. Something the builder can be proud of!

    Phillipe, just for reference, the atmega328p does not run the lamps in the nixieneon. It just helps keep then telling the correct time periodically. Except to set the clock, it can be completely disabled as well. The rings are self feeding.

    Agent420, I like the idea of the pendulum, then you need to add the equivalence of an escapement but electromechanical. Something you can see in action unlike the hall or optical sensor.

  4. Vital signal relays. Those are pretty cool. They’re designed, as much as possible, to always fail in a known state — the contacts are non-welding, and no return springs are used, just gravity. The idea is to wire things so the relay always fails in the most restrictive position (e.g., with the signal set to “danger”, not “clear”.)

Leave a Reply to svofskiCancel reply

Please be kind and respectful to help make the comments section excellent. (Comment Policy)

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.