[Bradley W. Lewis] is no stranger to Nixie clock builds, and he felt his latest commission was missing something. Instead of merely mounting the Nixie clock into a case resembling an NES console, he goes full tilt and makes it into an NES console emulator. After some work on the milling machine, a wooden box has room to squeeze in a few new components. [Bradley] originally planned to mount only an Arduino with an ArduNIX shield to handle the Nixie clock, but the emulator demands some space saving. Flipping the Arduino on its side freed up plenty of room and the shield still easily connects to the adjacent Nixie tube board.
A Raspberry Pi serves as the console emulator and was mounted close to the side of the case to allow access to its HDMI port. The other ports from both the Arduino and RasPi stick out of the back, including an extension to the Pi’s RCA video out and buttons to set both the hour and minutes of the clock. The two surplus NES buttons on the front of the case control power to the RasPi and provide a reset function for the Nixie clock.
If that isn’t enough Nixie to satisfy you, check out the WiFi Nixie counter.
Mom: “Do you how long you’ve been playing that blankety-blank Nintendo?”
Kid: “Yes MOTHER, exactly!”
Nice job, just the nixie clock would have been enough of a hack for more people but then Nintendo emulator is just the icing on the cake.
you accidentally a word.
Mother !
Nice, I really need to do something with all the nixies and dekatrons I have been collecting.
i was going to say the same thing, along with the VFDs I have in the box with them. Can’t get much for them on eBay since the former Soviet countries have a major stake in that market. I’ve already made a couple of clocks with the Nixies but no one seems to want homebrew electronics these days.
As I said before, people are just looking for excuses to retroactively justify purchasing a Raspberry Pi. You could pick up a NES for less than the Raspberry Pi cost.
If you wanted a NES yes. But he wanted a nixie clock with build in NES support. The raspberry pi also has HDMI out which kicks the antennae plug in the buttsticles. I have an NES AND a raspberry pi and I’m contemplating this sans the nixies.
Grabbing an NES on ebay is cheap yes, but that won’t do you much good without games. And some of those vintage games are NOT cheap.
Good to see someone hasn’t butchered an old NES for the sake of being retro this time. Great craftsmanship!
Thanks a bunch, guys, it was a really fun project!