Pity the aficionado of rare vintage displays. While Nixies and VFD tubes get all the attention and benefit from a thriving market to satisfy demand, the rarer displays from the mid-20th century period are getting harder and harder to find. One copy of an especially rare display is hard enough to find. Six copies for a clock? That’s a tall order.
That doesn’t mean you can’t fudge it, though, which is how this faux-NIMO clock came to be. [Paul Bricmont] was inspired by [Fran Blanche]’s NIMO tube primer, wherein the rare, single-digit CRT display was put through its paces. We’ve got to admit, it’s an easy display to fall in love with, thanks to its eerie blue phosphor glow, high voltage supply, and general quirkiness. [Paul] was unable to lay hands on a single tube, though, so he faked it with six tiny TFT displays and some plastic lenses. The lenses mimic the curved front glass of the original NIMO, while the TFT displays provide the stencil-style images of each numeral. The phosphor glow comes from replacing the stock white TFT backlight with a Neopixel array that can produce just the right shade of blue-green. 3D-printed modules hold two digits each, and the usual Arduino components run the show. The effect is quite convincing, although we bet some software tweaks could add things like faux burn-in and perhaps soften the edges of the digits to really sell it.
What other rare displays could be replicated this way? Given the variety of displays that were tried in the pre-LED era, it may be a rich vein to mine.
“The phosphor glow comes from replacing the stock white TFT backlight with a Neopixel array that can produce just the right shade of blue-green.”
That is awesome.
Completely obsessive and spectacularly geeky. Real excelence.
This confuses me; these are RGB displays, so why couldn’t the colour & variation be part of the digit bitmaps? I see they weren’t happy with brightness but still….
Good question. Maybe the stock color just wasn’t bright enough? Part of the appeal of this old display look is the contrast and the look of a bright numeral.
On the project’s page, the creator says that the displays are much too dim with their included backlights.
The last device I had that had this color was a night light. It finally died and was sent out with the trash.
Your clock made a good approximation of the color of the old display. Good job.
Fun build and beautifully executed.
But why simulate something else?
For some time I have been thinking it would be a nice idea to make a clock where each digit is a TFT display, and the displays are visibly separated from each other.
It’s not so difficult to do, but can be made into something with it’s own style
I’m glad to see this sort of thing done, as I’m sick of seeing awesome old test equipment torn apart so someone can make a silly clock out of its display.
Hear Hear!
Do you think VFD tubes are hard to find? Try to find a 7-segment bubble LED display similar to HP 5082-7441 for your DIY vintage pocket calculator.
search the’bay for 202259349147 and you shall find 2…
From the makes of I cant believe it’s not butter comes … I cant believe it’s not NEMO!