Let's apply some engineering to see what kind of battery would do the job. Assuming a neon strikes at 90V and extinguishes at 60V, the average voltage across the resistor would be 15V. Initially, I arbitrarily choose the series resistor to be 1M and the capacitor to be 2.2nF. The flash rate would be about 1 every 2 seconds. The average current per neon would be 15 microamps. Let's say there are 8, and we want it to run for a year (8000 hours), that means we need 960mA-hrs.
Somehow I don't think the old radio battery was anywhere near an amp-hour. So how about 10M resistor and 1nF capacitor. The flash rate would be about 1 every 10 seconds. It wouldn't be very busy or very bright but with 8 lamps, something would be happening often enough to be interesting. The average current would be 1.5uA so for a year we would need about 100mA-hr. That's doable. So take a block of something insulating - wood might do - 3 inches square by an inch deep, drill four 1/2 inch holes right through, each hole takes 15 LR44-size cells. Fashion a couple of end plates out of PCB material, solder on bits of spring out of a ball point pen. Solder a neon christmas tree together like joenixie, attach to base and connect to battery ends. Stick it on top of the TV and enjoy it for a year. Sounds like a perfect wet afternoon project for the (grand)kids! Now excuse me while I submit this as a little project to fill the gap in my favorite magazine. Actually, all kidding aside, this is the kind of thing that might appeal to Make Magazine. -- 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/msgid/neonixie-l/1e9651d3-35e2-4082-9439-df42f6c0d08d%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
