Magic: The Gathering nixie life counter
posted Jul 21st 2011 4:01pm by Brian Benchofffiled under: led hacks, misc hacks
Someone sent in a tip that pointed us to this Magic: The Gathering forum thread where a user named [DistortedDesigns] made a life counter for Magic: The Gathering out of Nixie tubes. While there’s not many details for this build, it’s just too cool to be forgotten in a single forum.
The project began by etching some plexiglas. There’s some earlier examples of [DistortedDesigns]‘ work that look very professional. The electronic are extremely simple – the 25 LEDs run off of 2 AA cells, and the nixies run off of 2 C cells. We were wondering when [DistortedDesigns] would drop the A-bomb, but it looks like this build doesn’t use a microcontroller.
The controls are back are toggle switches to power the LEDs and nixies. There are two knobs on the back, and from the write-up it’s pretty easy to infer that these are 10-position rotary switches. [DistortedDesigns] says, “the knobs in the back rotate around and supply power to each digit one at a time,” so with a transformer this seems like a very simple build.
It’s an excellent build that didn’t get enough attention when it’s author posted it. If you know of any under-appreciated builds, send it in send it in to our tip line.
The only problem I can see with that is you could never use it in any kind of tournament, because you’d be so constantly mobbed by impressed passersby that you’d never have time to play the game. :D