On 8 Aug 2011, at 23:17, neutron spin wrote:
Hello All,
Looking for some ideas or plans for a neon ring counter nixie clock.
I have some IN-12's that are very anxious to be born again in a neon
ring counter clock....thanks...
Robert W8UUU
Hi Robert,
I am currently in dialogue with an Australian person, who is on this
list and who has successfully made a ring counter clock using IN-3s.
His information and help is proving very useful to me. The clock is
based largely on Pieter-Tjerk de Boer's clock, but uses transistors
to drive the nixies rather than the opto-coupling system used by Pieter:
http://wwwhome.cs.utwente.nl/~ptdeboer/ham/neonclock/
Michael has kindly documented his project and has a web page at:
http://members.iinet.net.au/~mminns/NeonBulbClock/NeonBulb.html
The IN-3s are a good choice in that they have a wide striking to
maintaining voltage. This voltage difference is reasonably constant,
although it varies up and down the voltage scale from neon to neon
and thus the neons do need adequate burning in and careful matching
into sets. Michael has an Excel spreasheet documenting his
measurements for the neons, available from the website above.
The neons are slightly photo-sensitive in themselves and change
depending on the ambient light levels. Bear this in mind and try to
batch match the neons under constant lighting conditions. They also
fall foul of the problem that they will not light in the dark, again
imposing a level of complexity. Pieter-Tjerk de Boer describes this
issue on his own website.
How old-school you want to be depends on you. Pieter-Tjerk de Boer
has been very purist in his design. I am going the other way for
mine. PCBs, maybe even some surface mount stuff. Unsure if I am going
to use a real time clock and microcontroller yet, but I might, to set
the clock, sync up the rings and provide battery backup.
Be sure to buy at least four times the number of neons than you will
actually use in one clock, so you have plenty of choice.
John S
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