Thought I would post a follow-up regarding a RasPi as a nixie controller. So far, using a RasPi Zero W for controlling my latest nixie clock (8-tube b7971) has far-exceeded my expectations:
- No 'helper' FPGA is needed; there is far more than enough horsepower in the Pi to handle all of the compute, timekeeping, and serial communications - Timekeeping is accurate; the Pi periodically syncs to a time-source on the internet (no idea where). Perhaps it's from my router, which gets the time elsewhere. - Display updates are done once per second. I have never observed my display 'jump' or 'stall' +/- 1 second based on the random alignment between realtime, and when the clock software updates the display. I did not add any code to attempt to synchronize to realtime. - CPU utilization is averaging 3-4%, even when running a VNC server, plus all of the Linux housekeeping tasks. There are periodic spikes of ~40% each second when the clock software does it's work. No significant thermal generation (less than 10 degrees F as measure with infrared thermometer) - Using a cheap passive IR (PIR) sensor has allowed me to shut-down the tubes most of the time; the sensor is sensitive enough that I really cant sneak-up on my clock without it turning on. Nor is it falsely triggering. - GPIO programming with WiringPi is fairly easy; there were some quirks that I found and fixed when reading a digital input. Also some minor documentation issues about pin-naming. - Being able to remotely program without attaching/removing cables, power-cycle, etc is very handy. I use 'C' because it's compiled, hence faster execution versus python, perl, etc. - Only drawback so far is the startup-time (linux boot), which is just under a minute. I have not yet added the clock software into the bootup process so that it auto-starts on power-up; should be easy to do in crontab ? (I've done it before for a remote server; just cant remember where). - Without an attached RTC module, timekeeping relies on my internet service and WiFi running. I have thought about adding an RTC module as a backup, but it's low priority. -- 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 neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/ecb7bf99-184c-4c83-ac86-f25576829664%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
