The high speed cycling makes a lot of sense when the "slot machine" effect isn't desired.
I guess the harder question is how much a rapid cycling is enough. >From the standpoint of creating a look and feel for the clock, I would implement 20ms of cycling (10 x 2ms) done every second when second digit transitions. This way the clock has a small flicker on every transition (second, minute, hour transitions will all have 20ms of cycling). Keeping flickering consistent and tied to the transitioning seconds digit makes the flickering easier to explain to those that notice. The most reductive answer to those that notice is "Nixie tubes are less stable than modern displays this is why there is a little flicking". This leaves out cathode poisoning as a concept and the fact that the flicking/highspeed cycling used to reverse cathode poisoning. Yet the answer still gets across the truth that because Nixie tubes are flawed there will be some flickering. @Jeff Generally if a tube has heavy cathode poisoning, over driving the tube with 2 to 3 times the rated current is often needed to try and recover / reverse cathode poisoning in a nixie tube. Yet assuming a nixie tube doesn't have any cathode poisoning the going theory is; if every cathode is used regularly, cathode poisoning never should never occur in the first place. Simply creating neon plasma around every cathode on a regular basis should prevent cathode poisoning all together. What qualifies as "regularly" in duration and frequency is a tricky question but doesn't change the theory. On Wednesday, March 7, 2018 at 8:48:24 AM UTC-8, Spirit's lab wrote: > > While designing my own clock, I decided to investigate the cathode > poisoning prevention methods utilized by most clocks, and I discovered that > there's room to improve and experiment. > Here's a short video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skBwGGQ58MI > If you can't or don't want to watch: Switching between cathodes with a > delay of 1-2 milliseconds is going to provide the same cleaning effect as > the "slot machine", except without the extreme flicker which may be > annoying to some. > > As for my design - it's two HV5522s in the PLCC package connected to an > ESP8266(for driving the HV5522s the 3v3 signals are shifted to 5 - that > works up to a supply of 12.9V) and Yan's NCH6100HV boost board. > > It would be interesting to see what everyone here thinks. > -- 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/843112b8-6add-40a5-a1f0-193d4c49c422%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
