A Clock Made Out Of Some Very Weird Tubes

December 12, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 20 Comments

If you’re like [Richard], you’ve got a few really rare components lying around. Maybe it’s a very weird micro or a really tiny CRT, but eventually you’ve got to build something with these parts. When [Richard] decided to put some ITS1A neon display tubes to use, he fell back to the old standby – a really awesome clock.

Unlike the lowly Nixie tube, the ITS1A tube is weird. It’s a neon seven-segment display that can be controlled directly from the pins of a microcontroller. It does this with the help of seven tiny thyratrons in each segment. Even though this tube has neon, the display isn’t the familiar neon orange-red. The tube emits a lovely green with the help of a phosphor coating.

With a single digit already incorporated into [Richard]’s clock, he needed four indicators for the hours and minutes. After a failed experiment with a crazy 4-color, 16-pixel Melz ITM2-M display, he moved on to a simpler MTX90 thyratron indicator.

Using the same control scheme as his earlier numitron clock, Richard had a PCB made and wired everything up. The seven-segment tube indicates the value, and the indicator tubes indicates the position of the digit in the XX:XX standard. A very cool build with parts you don’t see coming around often.

Neon Binary Clock

July 16, 2010 by Mike Szczys 21 Comments

[Josiah] said ‘no’ to LEDs and instead used blue-phosphor neon lamps to build this binary clock. The ATmega328 inside uses three 8-bit shift registers to control the display. Each lamp needs a high-voltage NPN transistor in order to switch on the 150V necessary for proper illumination. A simple circuit was used to pull a 60 Hz clock signal out of the incoming 16VAC power. Unfortunately it was a bit too simple and didn’t provide a clean signal. [Josiah’s] workaround is something of a debounce subroutine in the firmware to prevent multiple interrupts on the falling edge.

The last project we saw from [Josiah] was the Coachella Lamp. That was a show piece of antiquated technology and this is another show piece with a minimalistic style. We also liked seeing the protoboard work on the inside. That’s a pretty jam-packed circuit board and keeping everything in the right place while you build up each trace with blobs of solder is no small feat.

A Bright Way To Cycle

October 4, 2009 by Jake W 19 Comments

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Want to be visible when cycling at night? [Neon Dean] came up with this possible solution, which he cruised on at Nuit Blanche. Its a bicycle with neon lights mounted on every surface possible. [Dean], who gave a similar treatment to his car, explained how it worked. All of the tubes take their power from a 12VDC battery he carries in a fanny pack. 12V is a far too low voltage to power the tubes, so a step up transformer is used to bring that number way up. [Dean] also decided to install a neon tube on each wheel. In order to deliver power to them, he mounted a rotor on each wheel, with two conductive tracks running close to the edge of each rotor. Two strips of steel act as brushes (in a manner similar to those on slot cars), and deliver the stepped-up power to the tubes. One creative, but perhaps not so bright, idea is [Dean]’s neon tube helmet.

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Toronto Embraces 4-letter Words

October 4, 2009 by Jake W 12 Comments

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This year was not the first in which the City Hall of Toronto was lit up in a unique way. However, it was the first time that the government building was used to project 4-letter words. Brainchild of [D.A. Therrien], the 4LWM represents something that he imagined for a long time. [Therrien] built the huge sign in Scottsdale, Arizona, where he displayed it over the waterfront. He was later commisioned to bring the sign to Toronto for Nuit Blanche after making some adaptations (due to weather differences). The sign is composed of 4 huge 16-segment displays. Each segment is made of many neon light modules. This configuration makes it less noticable if one such module fails. The sign is controlled below from a computer, which allows it to display text and simple animations. It’s the first in a series of installations dubbed “Beautiful Light” by [Therrien]. Despite the name, no inappropriate language was displayed on the sign.

Nixie Plasma Ball

September 15, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 15 Comments

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This one came out over a year ago and we missed it. [Daqq] has made a plasma ball out of a nixie tube. All that was required was the transformer from a cold cathode meant for computers and a nixie tube. He did have to do a tiny bit of modification to the power supply, which you can see on the project page. This isn’t the most useful project, since you can’t really see much of the plasma, but it is really cool nonetheless. We think this would make a really neat button. You can see a video of it in action after the break.

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Neon Light Christmas Tree

November 10, 2008 by Kimberly Lau 4 Comments

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Everyone always complains about the Christmas season coming earlier and earlier, but we think when we can have Christmas trees like the one pictured above, it’s not such a bad thing. Created by English fashion designer [Gareth Pugh], the tree features sixty white neon tubes, and is supported by a freestanding metal rod. It reminds us of the light sabers in Star Wars, which is probably why we like it so much. The tree is just a carrier for the decorations anyway, right? You can check out the tree in person at the TOPSHOP in Oxford Circus, London.