Hello, this is my first post here in the NeoNixie group so I hope this is an acceptable thread topic. I'm excited to find other people interested in this sort of thing to get some feedback if anyone has it to offer. Attached is a preliminary schematic that I designed for my first go at a Nixie clock. (When I say I designed I mean pieced together from the internet and filled in some gaps). I'd greatly appreciate any feedback anyone has on it concerning better methods or any major problems that would prevent if from working. Eventually I'd like to add in more features like acquiring the time via WiFi or GPS, temperature sensing and better dimming control and such, but for now I'm keeping it relatively bare bones (I think). I'm using an Atmega328p as the uC which will be communicating via I2C with a MAX1771ESA+ RTC chip. Even though I know multiplexing shortens the lifespan of the tubes I've decided to go with using MUXing because I'm not so knowledgeable on SMPSupplies (yet) and don't quite know how to get the necessary current out of one to use Direct Drive. My scheme is to use a 3:8 encoder on the anode side to select which anode is on. And on the cathode side I'm using a bin-decimal converter to select which digit is displayed. Each digit of a tube is attached to the same digit on the other tubes so that when the bin-decimal converter turns on the base, say for the "1"s transistor, all the "1"s for each tube will turn on on the cathode side, but only the correct anode will be on, thus displaying only the correct number on the intended tube. I haven't seen another design that does exactly this in the same way so I am not 100% confident it will work. It seems pretty straight forward, but then again, as with all electronics projects it probably isn't. I will include in my code some measures to avoid cathode poisoning, however, I just learned of another issue which is blue spots appearing somewhere on the anode mesh... I think. I still need to do some research about this and how to avoid it but if anyone has any knowledge about this they'd like to share I would appreciate it as I'd like to avoid this from happening in my design. Thanks for your time and I look forward to any and all responses.
Shep <https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-RRq4J135lbY/VvrQxlYW6XI/AAAAAAAAAIc/2oLMtnUf_D8VJ-XBmZ1EXu7h3Dj5EsVsQ/s1600/PG1.png> <https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-X4PchxD2EL0/VvrQiT0novI/AAAAAAAAAIU/cnEds-f5Ogw4bWnU0JzZSScAFpwxayLbw/s1600/PG2.png> -- 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/5030264e-7ab5-4544-a2da-aa34727e5429%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
