I've been using Raspberry Pi for all my designs now; built-in WiFi makes auto-adjusting clocks trivially simple, as long as I have internet service...... My RZ568m clock is still under construction. The basic design uses HV5530's in a serial chain, with each chip driving 2 tubes. The boards are chained with 10-conductor ribbon-cable, and I have a small level-shifter PCB to boost the signals of the RasPi or FPGA to 12V. Let me know if you want any of the design; nothing special in the design though. I dont have any usable software (it's diagnostic-only), because the actual clock is far more complex and will run with the FPGA and RasPi doing a lot of other non-nixie work.
The timekeeping software is really pretty simple: grab the time-of-day from the OS, then map the 6 digits onto specific bits in the serial chain, and send the serial bits at least once per second (I use 10x/second), and "roll" the digits rapidly when the minutes or seconds hit 59. On Friday, August 19, 2022 at 8:39:05 PM UTC-7 Terry S wrote: > As I mentioned in a previous thread -- my Jeff Thomas WWVB clock is > broken. A couple members here offered help, which I appreciate. But as > novel and cool as the WWVB clock approach is, it's a bit of a dated design > and I'm investigating doing something more "modern" with the big Z568M > tubes. > > For those that may not know, the clock uses a modified "atomic" clock > module from an ordinary WWVB sync'd wall clock. An 8 pin PIC set up as a > timer manipulates the lone input on the clock board as if a user was > pressing the button, setting the initial time and then allowing the WWVB > receiver to speed up or slow down the conventional CMOS counters on the > clock board to sync with WWVB time. It was truly an ingenious approach to > have precise timekeeping back in the day. (Hours still had to be set > manually by the user, using a magnet and reed switch.) > > With the advent of easy WIFI this approach is dated, the clock modules are > difficult to find, and there is some tedious clock board rework to do, > which I admit was easier to do when I had the right tools and magnification > at my disposal. Problem I need to solve. > > Soooo...... I'm seeking out an open source design I can use/adapt for my > big tubes. I'd like to lay out the boards myself so I can match the current > footprint and use my existing enclosure. I'm not hung up on the whole "not > invented here" syndrome -- I'm happy to use something well tested. > > Arduino based would be ideal, but I can work with most anything. Retired > now so looking to learn new tools. > > Any suggestions? > > Terry > -- 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 view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/17c75ab5-a32f-4c26-9f9b-279a4b1033dcn%40googlegroups.com.
