Merry Christmas to all on the list also! I am happy to have found it as a newcomer this year, and really appreciate everyone taking time to answer basic questions.
I decided at the last minute to build a very modest single tube numitron IV-9 clock for my brother-in-law for Christmas from scratch. It was the first major (for me anyways) electronics project that I breadboarded myself with an arduino and then transferred the design over to perfboard and wrote the arduino code myself (with help from other web sources of course), and then burned my own ATMega328p chip. I used a DS1307 chip for the RTC with a battery backup I desoldered off an old motherboard. The tube displays blinks a 4 digit time and has the option to display the date, and set both from the board. I spent a lot of time struggling with the code and adding new features, and had to stop myself from adding a piezo speaker in the fear of running out of time. It's not the prettiest thing to look at, but it works! I know he will appreciate the effort as he loves gifts people have taken the time to make. Anyways, this marks my exciting entry into the world of tubes (not counting some an earlier nixie clock kit that I fell in love with). I'm sure I'll be harassing the list with many questions in the new year, so prepare yourselves! Best, Dylan On Sat, Dec 24, 2011 at 8:01 AM, fixitsan <[email protected]> wrote: > I would just like to wish all group members a Happy Christmas > > It is 10 years ago that I began my first experiments with nixie tubes, > when I decided that I wanted to make a nixie clock for my father's > 60th birthday present. So, beginning in November I ordered tubes, some > PICs, downloaded Microchip's MPLAB for the first time and taught > myself assembly language for PICs. It was a steep learning curve > considering the 10 week deadline, but I couldn't afford a higher level > language so battled on. > > Then my interest continued with an invite from Ray Weisling to join > the first nixie group, NEONIXIE-L on Yahoo, when he saw me selling > clock number 2 on eBay, which I made in order to pay for both clocks. > > It is nice to see so many of those members are also here, and with you > there is also a huge number of new people with an interest in nixies. > It is nice to know that so many people share an interest with > yourself ! > > Although I built the first clock alone, it is true to say that I would > not have improved my skills or opened my mind to some very interesting > ideas had it not been for my membership of that group, and the > support, the nagging, challenges and humour shared among all members > there, and now here. > > I seem to have taken those ideas sideways into developing the > Smartsocket concept, originally for neon based tubes and now for the > IV-17 vfd tubes which I first began experimenting with in 2007. (it > has been a slow project !) > > Merry Christmas and the best of the season to you all and your > families > > Chris > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "neonixie-l" group. > To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/neonixie-l?hl=en-GB. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/neonixie-l?hl=en-GB.
