For me, nixie-tube projects are a double-dose of what I love to do: vintage display devices and electronic design.
I started in electronics at age 5 by destroying things, then taking them apart, then fixing or salvaging, and finally, creating. That process took almost 15 years. In 1976 I got a piece of surplus equipment that had 6 nixie tubes, and it was the coolest thing I ever saw. I would turn it on, just to play with it; so many knobs, colorful illuminated switches, and of course the nixie tubes. I used the frequency counter a few times over the next 10 years while I took up computers as a hobby (as in, soldering S100 kits, wire-wrapping, writing *all* of my software), then scrapped it. The nixie tubes sat in my junkbox for about 25 years. Then in 2011 as our 2 kids got closer to college I had more time on my hands and accidentally got back into electronics: I had an older PC that was uselessly slow running windows, but as I literally held it over the trashcan I had an epiphany that there must be something useful that his computer could do. So I found a bunch of free software (Linux, gEDA tools, Altera FPGA tools, SPICE, Verilog simulators) and had a fully working CAD system that I could design anything, and debug it, then build it. Now all I needed was a project.........and what do you suppose I found in my junkbox ??? Each project starts out with objectives, and the first project was to layout a PCB, have it fabbed, and have it work the first time. It also had to have CMOS logic gates that were powered directly off the AC line without a transformer (dont ask...it's a weird idea that popped into my head years ago and I had to try it out). And it had to have battery backup because I hate resetting clocks when there's a brief power blip. That project went so well, each of our 2 kids built their own. So, that's the "what" behind my projects. As far as the "why", I'm an EE by education and passion. I like making things, but my day-job as an engineering manager at a major semiconductor manufacturer leaves me unsatisfied because in the business world there are ridiculous schedule pressures, politics, endless frustration with design tools and methodologies that make no logical sense and take far longer with more effort than 'old school' methods. By doing my own designs, I'm completely free to do what I want, how I want to, in whatever timeframe, whatever cost I choose, and I can do things I find interesting regardless of their commercial value. It's also a test-of-will, because I have never given up on any of my nixie projects (or project cancellations as they are called at my day-job). My current project (NIMO tube clock) has things like op-amps, A->D, D->A converters, lots of diagnostic code written in C,ncurses, high-voltage supply, and a lot of analog peculiarities. I didn't exactly have to design it that way, but I wanted to because I've never done a design with any of those things and this was a chance to learn all of them. Not only have I learned way more about all of those things than I ever thought I would, it's led me to other things I want to explore on my next project. My only fear is that I have more projects that I want to do than years remaining in my lifetime. -- 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/340414a9-dddb-4b28-97e6-ee45160184ab%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
