Plus Size Watch With A Pair Of Tiny Nixies

When you stuff a pair of Nixie tubes into a wristwatch the resulting timepiece looks a little like Flavor Flav’s necklace. Whether that’s a good thing or not depends on your taste and if you’re comfortable with the idea of wearing 200 volts on your wrist, of course.

As a build, though, [prototype_mechanic]’s watch is worth looking into. Sadly, details are sparse due to a computer issue that ate the original drawings and schematics, but we can glean a little from the Instructables post. The case is machined out of solid aluminum and sports a quartz glass crystal. The pair of IN-16 tubes lives behind a bezel with RGB LEDs lighting the well. There’s a 400mAh LiPo battery on board, and an accelerometer to turn the display on with a flick of the wrist.

It may be a bit impractical for daily use, but it’s a nicely crafted timepiece with a steampunk flair. Indeed, [prototype_mechanic] shows off a few other leather and Nixie pieces with four tubes that certainly capture the feel of the steampunk genre. For one with a little more hacker appeal, check out this Nixie watch with a 3D-printed case.

10 thoughts on “Plus Size Watch With A Pair Of Tiny Nixies

    1. I like this part –
      “There must be an accelerometer in there because the display is switched off unless the watch is held at a certain configurable angle”

      um or perhaps a simple tilt switch.

  1. Having 12 amber LEDs around the face to indicate hours and using the tubes to indicate minutes might’ve made this more practical, trying to figure out if it’s telling one the hours, minutes, or seconds, would be a pain.

    But nonetheless, it’s a nice looking, if impractical, timepiece.

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