[Johannes] wanted to develop an unusual way to display time on a custom wristwatch. LED’s were too common, and mechanical indicators with small engines were too expansive, but Nixie tubes were just right. His design for the Numitron Geekwatch utilized two boards that were soldered together at a right angle, with a 3D printed enclosure made of semi-transparent PLA.
Future designs of this will improve on the button functionality as well as the housing of the wristwatch to protect the fragile tubes from external forces.
After the break is a video (in German) with [Johannes] going through the steps needed to make one of these of your very own:
EDIT:
This watch contains a vacuum with some filaments, not a gas. There is a difference between numitrons and nixie tubes, which has been stated in the comments below.
Numitrons are not nixie tubes. Numitrons are filaments, and there’s a vacuum, not a gas.
HAD fail!
As [jcwren] wrote, numitron-tubes are incandescent devices, not neon-filled gas-discharge. FFS read the article, before blabbering about a lot of nonsense. Also, taking most of the text from here http://www.explainthatstuff.com/how-nixie-tubes-work.html without mentioning the source, is bad practice.
You think you are cool and geeky, meanwhile everyone around thinks you have a mild autism.
I’ve still not decided on that one for myself.
At first I thought those were 2 USB ports
Haha that’s what I thought too!
A watch so incredibly ugly even that guy’s mom is rolling on the floor laughing.
Yeah but stick it in a matt black case, reduce the height quite a bit, replace the bloody awful PLA with a thin metal casing, etc… and it’d be a very nifty looking watch. Would be nice to have the Numitrons slightly proud of the casing, rather than deeply recessed among so much empty space. If he wants to use plastic there’s plenty of potential to make it tighter, since he has access to a 3D printer.
I think Johannes was concentrating more on getting the electrics working first, maybe he’ll tackle the aesthetics later. He can still say he’s got a Numitron watch and you haven’t!
Anyone have pics or vid of it actually working?
I’ve seen Nixie tube watches (such as the one the Woz showed off in 2009), but they always have a separate filament for each number (0-9) in each tube. This one appears to only have two vertical filaments in each tube.
nvm. Just saw it at the very beginning of the vid… Must have missed it the first time.
So it appears it’s some sort of segmented nixie instead of the traditional 1 filament per number?
Check out this old HAD image – http://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/numitron.jpg
Each element is a discrete incandescent filament.
A Nixie is a neon discharge lamp with a shaped cathode for each digit.
A Numitron is a vacuume seven-segment filament lamp (which were also made on DIP format).
I’m sorry, but small 3D printed parts are ugly, even uglier in contrast with leather. I’d rather go for wood with this.
Yeah. Even a coat of krylon or something to that effect would go a long way.
Cool hack, but if you’re going to zoom all the way in with your camera try not to move your hands (and the parts you’re trying to show) so much :-P
Nice, but it sounds like he’s speaking a whole nother language! It would look better with a totally clear case though, show off all that geek goodness.
Expansive? Yes… sometimes I wish my analogue (ticking) watch would just shut up and stop yapping :)
Great job! Thank you very much for the work and project information!