[Showcase] Nixius - An ARM powered Nixie Clock - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / projects

author: roli
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 29, 2015, 02:28:21 am
content: So basically... A while ago I decided to make a Nixie clock. Of course Nixie clocks seem to be really popular and you can find many examples around. Most of them seem to be powered by a complicated power supply and use old Nixie drivers to drive them. Usually in a combination with arduinos with through hole components and big PCBs.Well I decided to take a bit different approach. Instead of using Nixie drivers I used transistors - and a lot of them. For the power supply I took some of the designs from around the internet and built everything to be as cheap as possible.I used an STM32F0 64 pin micro to drive everything (overkill I know) - the cheapest STM ARM micro that I could find. For the Nixies I decided to use IN-1s. I made some custom PCBs to hold everything and I used as much SMD components as possible. Why? To make it cheaper. And because 10x10cm PCB is not only cheaper but also nicer to look at.Features? Clock, temperature display (using DHT11 or DHT22 - I was planning on using the DS18B20 but I lost my mind trying to make the OneWire protocol work) and auto power off. Basically the clock will power off (and turn on) at a preset time - useful for bedrooms and in places where you don't want the nixies shining during the night.Anyways... enough of the babble... some pictures:Bare PCBs:Completed Thing in a nice custom case:Temperature display:And another for the end:I do plan on releasing everything (code, PCBs, ...). I just need some time to gather everything. And questions, comments will be welcome!

author: roli
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2015, 09:01:27 pm
content: Here we go! I finally found the time to put everything online.Github and hackaday project info:https://github.com/r00li/Nixiushttps://hackaday.io/project/5543-nixiusYou can find pretty much everything that you need there.

author: platone58
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: July 26, 2015, 02:03:38 pm
content: thanks, very much

author: zapta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 27, 2015, 04:09:33 pm
content: How come some digits are crooked? They all seem to have the same orientation on the PCB.

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 27, 2015, 04:22:06 pm
content: i predict the next step will be Lixius. A linux powered nixi clock

author: eas
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 27, 2015, 04:37:06 pm
content: Wait, where is the crank?Oh, ARM, not arm. My mistake.

author: codeboy2k
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 28, 2015, 04:58:06 am
content: I like the SMD transistor approach. Using 30 SMD parts instead of 4 DIP parts is about the same cost when you factor in that you can only get the drivers from ebay these days, and with shipping it's about $10-$12 anyways for 4-5 driver IC's. Then you need to make your board bigger to accommodate them, which adds to the board cost too.Yeah, ARM is probably overkilla cheap PIC or AVR could do just as wellBut it still looks nice, even though I'm not a fan of the 2 x 2 digits.

author: linux-works
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 29, 2015, 05:51:59 pm
content: Quote from: free_electron on July 27, 2015, 04:22:06 pm"why not both?" lolmy nixie project uses a distributed approach. the clock is mostly just a display device, with only a software clock (arduino millis() timer) running the timekeeping function. the key is that I get updates over a zigbee radio (say, ever 5 minutes) from a time source that is stable, such as NTP or GPS or even a good RTC module.my back-end timeserver is a stratum-1 NTP rasp pi system with gps and kernel PPS support. that will send out time beacon updates and all my home systems that can receive xbee will update to the new time value. that architecture works pretty well and it also lets me 'send messages' to the clocks that I can use for various 'IoT' kinds of purposes.so, I like to keep the clock simple but somewhat abstract and let the remote systems have the smarts, pretty much. I can display alarm events or timer events or even newmail/unread mail counts on the 'clock' this way.one of these days I'll have to finalize my pcb and get it out there. been thinking about this project for far too long and its still just a perf board with hand-wired kynar all over the place