Well done and well documented Senk Ju (except there are no comments in your very clean code)!
As far as the division operation goes, you may use a software trick to display the decimal part: the integer part is shown as the result, but press-and-hold the equal (rocket) button will display the decimal part. Or let the equal button switch between integer and decimal, but that become confusing. This trick, using a dedicated key, was used on some 1970's calculator that had too few digits to display a full result that was supported by the computing logic, instead. Reading your code I noticed you used the standard Arduino digitalRead/digitalWrite library functions. They hide lots of sanity checks and they are pretty slow (56 cycles people say). digitalReadFast/digitalWriteFast or direct access would provide a faster I/O (down to 2 cycles) at the expense of loosing readability of your code. You probably don't need this kind of optimisation with 5 digits but I am sure your journey will not stop here :) I think that early LED displays are equally fascinating, have a very peculiar deep red color (660 nm) and are easier to drive. They do draw "high" current as their efficiency was low, resulting in heat generation which leads to self-destruction: just run them at the lower acceptable supply voltage. Paolo On Sun, Jun 30, 2024 at 3:18 AM Senk Ju <[email protected]> wrote: > Hello! > > I'm new to this group and wanted to take the opportunity to introduce > myself quickly. > > My interest in Nixie tubes started in 2016 when I saw this video > <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4-pgzyT0No> by Techmoan. I bought a > ready-made Nixie clock shortly after, but never considered building my own > projects with them, as I knew they required fairly high voltages and I > didn't have any experience in electrical engineering. > > Last year, however, I was sitting around bored and remembered that I had > always wanted to build something using a microcontroller. I'm usually more > of a software guy, but I've always found the prospect of writing software > that actually does something "in reality" intriguing. I didn't feel > comfortable working with high voltages, so I did some research into > alternative display technologies with a similar charm to Nixies, and > stumbled upon VFD tubes. > > Without any real plan in mind, I ordered some from an Ukrainian seller on > eBay. I initially considered using IV-11 tubes, but decided to use IV-12 > instead, as I preferred them to have real pins that could be used with a > socket. > > It took me almost 10 months to complete my project, mostly because I was > learning along the way and didn't own any equipment when I started. I am, > howver, very pleased with the outcome. I have created a GitHub repository > with more details for those who are interested. > > https://github.com/oskar2517/vfd-tube-calculator > > I now feel relatively comfortable working with Nixie tubes (mostly because > I now own a power supply that lets me lower the current to a non-lethal > value) and am currently in the midst of building my first Nixie clock using > ZM1020 tubes for the digits and a ZM1070 tube for the seconds' indicator. > > I'm not only interested in Nixie tubes, but most of the display technology > from around that period. Besides Nixies and VFD tubes, I have played around > with Numitrons, Dekatrons and Pixie tubes and have recently acquired an E1T > tube which I am looking forward to figuring out how to drive. > > Senk Ju > > -- > 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/700b5d38-3086-4685-881e-01945e2c9385n%40googlegroups.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/700b5d38-3086-4685-881e-01945e2c9385n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- 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/CABj2VaaVwk8MqzUmn%2BU_eMzeLKDfnXte0J%3D66SV1fteO-Q40jA%40mail.gmail.com.
