Hi all, Thanks Brian for mentioning the competition<http://www.tubeclockdb.com/forum/Notices/4889-Win-a-free-thermNeon-Kit-from-SALTechips%21.html>to win a thermNeon kit which is currently running on TubeClockDB.
I thought I would take this opportunity to share some background behind the thermNeon and SALTechips. Back in 2009 Alex Tsekenis built a thermometer<http://www.flickr.com/photos/alextsekenis/8626479086/in/set-72157633183406346/>using an IN-13 tube and in doing an internet search found that I had also put one together<http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrlaw/3165422127/in/set-72157626504528391>. Alex got in contact and we decided to collaborate on creating a new digital version and SALTechips was born! We started to brainstorm what features we would like to see in the new thermometer and how they would be accessed. The menu system uses a combination of colour illumination and the scale centigrade values to show what option you are at and its value. Settings are stored in EEPROM memory. When it came to choosing between the IN-9 and IN-13 tubes, the choice was clear. The IN-13 offers a larger bar-graph length, greatly reduced operating current, higher linearity and the auxiliary cathode. These qualities give the thermNeon an increased resolution and accuracy, reduced power consumption and self-heating and a reliable way to activate the tube. Despite its higher cost and reduced availability, the IN-13 is overall a more suitable tube. Another subtlety of these bar-graph tubes is the loss of linearity as the glow approaches the top; doubling the input current will not double the bar-graph length. This is due to the overlap between the ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ glow operating modes of the tube, which can be modelled mathematically using exponential equations but it would require a lot of program memory to implement. The thermNeon elegantly accounts for this by using two different slope coefficients to drive the IN-13 tube. For more information on the theory and operation of the IN-13 tube, Alex has researched and written up an excellent document here<http://www.saltechips.com/products/thermneon/theory.html> . Thinking about how we were going to mount the IN-13 tube with the scale, we decided to use a 12mm thick piece of acrylic, which would protect the tube from accidental knocks. A channel was machined out of the scale to slide the tube into, giving it a secure, but viewable place in the acrylic. The thick scale also makes reflections from the engraved gradations visible. We sanded the sides of the scale to give a frosted effect that smoothly diffuses the illumination. Deciding on what temperature range to use, we looked at various temperatures around the world and decided to use 10 – 40 deg C (50 – 105 deg F) as that looked reasonable for an indoor room thermometer. If indoor room temperatures are below or above these temps, then more likely the user would be buying a heater or a fan instead of a nixie thermometer! For the base design, we originally thought about using a solid piece of hardwood with most of its core routed out, but found the mechanics of the assembly difficult and it cost prohibitive. Looking at alternative ways of construction, we found using finger joints and 6mm wood, we could get the bases made up at a reasonable cost, be easy to assemble and look good! A stain and finish was used to highlight the grain and seal the pores of the wood to provide resistance from the elements and scratches. Since we had built IN-13 thermometers before, we already had a very good idea of what would be involved with the electronics design for the new one. We started by interconnecting functional block diagrams of the different subcircuits. The schematic diagrams were then produced in EAGLE and simulated in PSpice, LTSpice and Mindi. A prototype was built to check the results from the simulators. Some of the firmware functionality such as the switch-mode controller was implemented in hardware until the firmware was ready. We decided to use mostly through hole components to make assembly more accessible. The firmware was written in C in MPLAB X using the C18 compiler. About ¼ of the time went into documenting the C statements to improve readability and serviceability. The PIC18F1330 contains 3 hardware PWM channels, making it easier to control the number of PWM channels in the thermNeon (6 in total). The most challenging part of the firmware was the colour mixing for the scale illumination. Two RGB LEDs are assigned a 4-bit intensity value per die for a total of 4096 colours. The RGB values are calculated by a function that accepts an HSV colour representation, calculated depending on the read temperature, hot/cold user temperature setpoints and hot/cold user colour settings. Consequently these two functions have the largest Flash memory footprint. We have made the schematic, code and firmware of the themNeon freely available under CC BY-SA-NC and GPL. You can download them from our website here <http://www.saltechips.com/products/thermneon/hard-software.html>. It has been a long journey for us (3 years!) from the original idea to the finished project. The electronics is only part of what one needs to consider and put in place before making the project available to others. We hope you enjoy the thermNeon as much as we did working on the project. For more information, you can visit us at our website<http://www.saltechips.com/>, facebook <http://www.facebook.com/SALTechips> or youtube<http://www.youtube.com/SALTechipsVideos>pages. Cheers Simon On Thursday, 28 March 2013 12:33:36 UTC+11, Stuckey wrote: > > Hello - > SALTechips has donated a thermNeon kit to a giveaway via TubeClockDB.com. > To enter, all you need to do is leave a post. > > > http://www.tubeclockdb.com/forum/Notices/4889-Win-a-free-thermNeon-Kit-from-SALTechips%21.html > > Disclosure - I own TubeClockDB.com > > Brian > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/neonixie-l/-/lkW6wzo4Ts4J. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
