Nixie Tube Breakout Boards - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / projects

author: mdszy
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 28, 2017, 06:50:56 pm
content: Pretty soon here (Tuesday, hopefully!) I'll finally have all the equipment to manufacture my own circuit boards at home. My first project is going to be making some nixie tube breakout boards for the IN-12A's I have and plan to use in a clock.However, I got to thinking, would this be something other people are interested in? They'd be very simple to make and sell (hopefully pretty cheaply) on Tindie or something, and being able to quickly breadboard a Nixie tube circuit would probably be very useful for people other than myself.What do you all think? Something you'd use/buy? Pointless? Let me know!

author: NivagSwerdna
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 29, 2017, 10:46:20 pm
content: Add a HV power supply and HV5812 drivers which could be optionally populated and I'm sure that would be useful.The Mk 1.5 supply described athttps://threeneurons.wordpress.com/nixie-power-supply/is a good one.

author: schmitt trigger
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 29, 2017, 10:51:34 pm
content: I have bought a pair of the Mk1.5 Nixie supplies, and I'm very satisfied with them.I actually built the voltage tripler (as described on his webpage) to simultaneously drive Nixies and Dekatrons (which require 510 volt for the plate).And indeed, Nixies look sooooooooooooooooo cool!(I'm no related to threeneurons, I'm only a satisfied customer).

author: mdszy
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 29, 2017, 11:00:47 pm
content: Quote from: NivagSwerdna on May 29, 2017, 10:46:20 pmHmm, do you think that would make it a bit bigger than can be slotted into a Breadboard? Or is that not something you think is an issue?

author: NivagSwerdna
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 30, 2017, 11:39:52 am
content: Only my 2c worth...To be useful I feel it needs to do more than just split out the pins... adding drivers would be useful. The HV supply could perhaps be omitted as these can be brought separately.I have recently built a clock and split into two boards... one for tubes and drivers and the other for power supplies and controller but your mileage may vary.If you target audience is the average Arduino or RPi user then usefully you need to provide drivers and HV power and then they can connect and write the software.... e.g. Nixie Shield style.One issue is the number of tube variants out there... if you can make your board support multiple tube variants then you extend its usefulness.e.g. My board is for ZM1332 nixies... I doubt it has much commercial value since many consider these tubes too small/niche... personally I like them.

author: schmitt trigger
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 30, 2017, 12:51:19 pm
content: To address the different Nixie types which have different pinouts, you could use a 20 pin dip header, where you could hard-wire the matching IC outputs with its respective Nixie inputs.You may want to provide at least a couple of socket sizes too.

author: mdszy
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 30, 2017, 01:06:18 pm
content: Good ideas! I'll see about giving it a spot for a driver IC and maybe also making a power supply to sell along side it or something. Thanks for the input!