My 18-tube IN-18 clock has been running for over 2 years now; the date is 
displayed on 8 tubes in MM.DD.YYYY format, and those are basically static. 
Time is on the other 6 in HH:MM:SS format, so not all of them are fully 
cycled. Each night, at 11PM, the clock does a depoisoning routine for 1 
hour, then shuts off. In the morning, if we want the clock on, there's an 
ON button I made from a 'Tomorrowland' souvenir pin. This clock was 
inspired by the IN-18 clocks in the 2015 movie.


   - all tubes that are cycled 0-9 multiple times during the day are simply 
   shut off
   - all tubes that cycle 0-6 multiple times during the day are cycled 6-9 
   for 1 hour.
   - all tubes that are static during the day are cycled 0-9. I should have 
   put some smarts in the FPGA code to skip the digit that was displayed that 
   day

So far, no tubes show abnormalities. One tube has a slight dark region at 
the very bottom of a few digits, and I've been watching that very carefully 
fir the past 6 months. So far, it's not degrading any further. Someday I 
will retrofit out the FPGA and replace it with a RasPi, and fix the 
depoisoning routine and add a PIR sensor. Yeah, someday.....


The RasPi-based 7971 clock uses a PIR sensor, so it's mostly off except 
when I turn over in my sleep or walk into the room. I do plan log the 
runtime for each segment of each tube, down to the second, and balance-out 
the usage. I know it's overkill but I like the programming challenge.

My big clock (pictured in my google icon) has been up for over 4 years, and 
has static display on the tubes with no depoisonong. 2 have died, and it 
took awhile to depoison a third one.

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