If you drive your tubes with a current-regulator, there's really no need to regulate the HV supply unless you are trying to minimize the power. All you need is to ensure the voltage is high enough for ionization.
I've used current-regulated cathode drivers on two of my clock designs. My present clock project uses a current-regulator on the anode side (each tube has it's own PMOS device). The drive current is adjustable with a single pot; I didn't see a need to tweak each tube's current independently, though that is possible by swapping a resistor in the current-regulator. I've chosen current regulation instead of voltage regulation because the brightness and 'wearout' of the tube is a function of the current. Nixies have nonlinear I-V characteristics, and I've seen considerable variations between tubes. All of this matters when you use a constant voltage + series anode resistor to run the tube because you have to calculate the resistor value based on min & max supply voltage, min & max tube-voltage, etc. It's moot with a current-regulated driver. -- 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/6d72ff6d-d737-4316-a26f-f7012f999f70%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
