Re: [neonixie-l] Re: Design my own Nixie Clock?
I agree that Radio Shack is a poor source - very limited selection of parts. Look around your area for a surplus electronics, tools etc stores in your area. They are all over the country. Look on your newstand for a magazine called Nuts 'n Volts, they have many adds from surplus dealers. In Toronto Canada there is a store on Queen St called Active Surplus - I have been buying all sorts of components from them since the late 1970's, Prices are very low, they used to sell bulk quantities such as a cup of transistors for a few dollars. I still go there. Second hand shops like Goodwill and Salvation Army thrift stores often sell electronic goods cheaply (but GoodWill is getting pricey now) - you can scavage parts or power supplies. I bought a Sony calculator with about 20 small Nixies (lucky find) for only $10. It works perfectly but is rather large. Mail order and big retailers such a DigiKey, Mouser should be chosen for latest technology and all at one location buying. Another source of electronics are ham radio fleamarkets - check the ARRL web-site for links. These are large garage-sale type sales usually held on week-ends, mainly by private sellers, but amazing stuff shows up all the time. The Dayton Hamvention held annually in May has hundreds of dealers of every imaginable electronic device. I try to keep my costs as low as possible by following these ideas. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups neonixie-l group. To post to this group, send an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/neonixie-l/-/79mQwoAjj9wJ. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: [neonixie-l] Re: Design my own Nixie Clock?
I agree with one of the other posters... I think that the best place to start is with an existing design. There are tons available on the internet, you can order parts from mouser.com -Adam On 8/16/2012 9:36 AM, Frederick Heald wrote: Just curious - why not build a kit clock or two to get some practice with the circuitry before you try to engineer and build from scratch? There's a wide variety of cool kits, analog and digital; just mounting and adding buttons gives you a lot of customization opportunity. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups neonixie-l group. To post to this group, send an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: [neonixie-l] Re: Design my own Nixie Clock?
On 12-08-16 12:21 PM, philthepill wrote: In Toronto Canada there is a store on Queen St called Active Surplus - I have been buying all sorts of components from them since the late 1970's, Prices are very low, they used to sell bulk quantities such as a cup of transistors for a few dollars Back in the day there were many places like that in Toronto and Montreal. One of the biggest ones was ETCO of Montral, alas they closed the retail store and moved to Vermont as a wholesale business. http://www.surplustraders.net/ Mail order and big retailers such a DigiKey, Mouser should be chosen for latest technology and all at one location buying. Another mail order place that is fairly cheep is futurlec, although they are a bit mysterious, as they day they are in Australia, but the packages from them come from Thailand... http://www.futurlec.com/index.shtml -- Charles MacDonald Stittsville Ontario cm...@zeusprune.ca Just Beyond the Fringe http://users.trytel.com/~cmacd/tubes.html No Microsoft Products were used in sending this e-mail. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups neonixie-l group. To post to this group, send an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
[neonixie-l] Re: Design my own Nixie Clock?
A couple of years ago just for fun I started from scratch and designed a nixie clock circuit from the ground up (pun intended), that uses (6) 74HC160 counters. The ic count is 17 packages for a plain 24-hour only clock. The package count goes to 18 for a 12/24 hour selectable version. It sets using thumbwheel switches and a push button. I know that to all of you guys out there who use processors that this seems elementary. However, even so, I am still rather pleased with the '160 clock. Chuck Richards Original Message From: threeneur...@yahoo.com To: neonixie-l@googlegroups.com Subject: RE: [POSSIBLE SPAM] [neonixie-l] Re: Design my own Nixie Clock? Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2012 19:01:51 -0700 (PDT) First of all, I have no experience in circuit design, electronics, or programming. ... Any help would be greatly appreciated! Sean I'm with Adam. If this is your first time out of the gate, go for the discrete logic design. That is using 7400 series TTL, or 4000 series CMOS logic parts. Or the mix of the two. If you run them at 5V, then you can mix them together. Get copies of the TTL and CMOS Cookbooks, as mentioned before. They're great starter books. Here's an example of a 4000 CMOS logic clock: http://threeneurons.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/nixie6c_sch.gif Its from a kit I sell, but its on the web, so use it, if you want. It does mix TTL and CMOS. Most is CMOS, but the nixie drivers are TTL (Russian equivalent of 74141s). It includes a dekatron pendulum circuit, but I'd omit that, unless you want the extra complication. That part of the circuit includes the charge pump, U11 (4013) and the circuitry right of U11. I'd hold off on the Arduino, for now. It involves learning programming. You've got enough on your plate, for this pass. Maybe on your 2nd project, you may want to try a microcontroller. Then, an Arduino, is a great way to break into it. But, for now, one step at a time. I'd even avoid making your own HV switching supply, for now. Make that another project, for another day. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups neonixie-l group. To post to this group, send an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/neonixie-l/-/VmJkFr_G0JIJ. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. $4.95/mo. National Dialup, Anti-Spam, Anti-Virus, 5mb personal web space. 5x faster dialup for only $9.95/mo. No contracts, No fees, No Kidding! See http://www.All2Easy.net for more details! -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups neonixie-l group. To post to this group, send an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: [neonixie-l] Re: Design my own Nixie Clock?
A couple of years ago just for fun I started from scratch and designed a nixie clock circuit from the ground up (pun intended), that uses (6) 74HC160 counters. How do you do the divide-by-6 digits? Just use gates to reset the counters when they get to 6? I'm more used to using 7492 counters for that task, so I'm curious. - John -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups neonixie-l group. To post to this group, send an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: [neonixie-l] Re: Design my own Nixie Clock?
I use processors and this doesn't seem elementary to me! I wouldn't say that a microcontroller is more difficult to use than straight logic. On the contrary, I always refer to my penchant for using microcontrollers as cheating.. or the software engineer's way out: Only design enough electronics so that you can write the rest in software. ;) Some day I'll be good enough to design my own clock using straight logic chips.. -Adam On 8/15/2012 10:43 AM, chuck richards wrote: A couple of years ago just for fun I started from scratch and designed a nixie clock circuit from the ground up (pun intended), that uses (6) 74HC160 counters. The ic count is 17 packages for a plain 24-hour only clock. The package count goes to 18 for a 12/24 hour selectable version. It sets using thumbwheel switches and a push button. I know that to all of you guys out there who use processors that this seems elementary. However, even so, I am still rather pleased with the '160 clock. Chuck Richards -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups neonixie-l group. To post to this group, send an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: [neonixie-l] Re: Design my own Nixie Clock?
On 8/15/2012 11:18 AM, John Rehwinkel wrote: A couple of years ago just for fun I started from scratch and designed a nixie clock circuit from the ground up (pun intended), that uses (6) 74HC160 counters. How do you do the divide-by-6 digits? Just use gates to reset the counters when they get to 6? I'm more used to using 7492 counters for that task, so I'm curious. - John Synchronous counters will accept a parallel data input and/or a reset signal. The tricky part is going from 12 to 01. You have to issue a load command with 0001 on the data bus to set it to 1. The '160 has an asynchronous reset, while the '162 has a synchronous reset. So the logic would be slightly different for those two parts. The advantage of synchronous counters is that you don't get glitches, and if you do, they don't matter since the signals are only sampled on the rising edge of the clock. It's not so important for a time-of-day clock, but designing circuits to work at a hundred MHz is a lot easier with synchronous logic. -- David Forbes, Tucson, AZ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups neonixie-l group. To post to this group, send an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: [neonixie-l] Re: Design my own Nixie Clock?
I pick up all my parts from eBay. Takes two weeks for it to arrive but you can't beat the price. Yes, I know there can be quality/fakes but so far the record has been good. :) Sent from my iPhone On Aug 15, 2012, at 5:23 PM, Sean sean4s...@gmail.com wrote: So, right now I'm looking at taking John's advice and starting with a solderless board and some LED's. I see most of these basic parts at RadioShack. Is this a good place to get parts? Any better places? Also, where is a good place to get the 74141 drivers? And the 5V power supply? Any common items I can repurpose? On the topic of drivers, is the 74141 pretty universal for all Nixie tubes? I read somewhere about the blue spot problem being caused by using the wrong driver. Sorry if these are pretty simple questions! On Wednesday, 15 August 2012 13:22:37 UTC-5, nixiebunny wrote: On 8/15/2012 11:18 AM, John Rehwinkel wrote: A couple of years ago just for fun I started from scratch and designed a nixie clock circuit from the ground up (pun intended), that uses (6) 74HC160 counters. How do you do the divide-by-6 digits? Just use gates to reset the counters when they get to 6? I'm more used to using 7492 counters for that task, so I'm curious. - John Synchronous counters will accept a parallel data input and/or a reset signal. The tricky part is going from 12 to 01. You have to issue a load command with 0001 on the data bus to set it to 1. The '160 has an asynchronous reset, while the '162 has a synchronous reset. So the logic would be slightly different for those two parts. The advantage of synchronous counters is that you don't get glitches, and if you do, they don't matter since the signals are only sampled on the rising edge of the clock. It's not so important for a time-of-day clock, but designing circuits to work at a hundred MHz is a lot easier with synchronous logic. -- David Forbes, Tucson, AZ On Wednesday, 15 August 2012 13:22:37 UTC-5, nixiebunny wrote: On 8/15/2012 11:18 AM, John Rehwinkel wrote: A couple of years ago just for fun I started from scratch and designed a nixie clock circuit from the ground up (pun intended), that uses (6) 74HC160 counters. How do you do the divide-by-6 digits? Just use gates to reset the counters when they get to 6? I'm more used to using 7492 counters for that task, so I'm curious. - John Synchronous counters will accept a parallel data input and/or a reset signal. The tricky part is going from 12 to 01. You have to issue a load command with 0001 on the data bus to set it to 1. The '160 has an asynchronous reset, while the '162 has a synchronous reset. So the logic would be slightly different for those two parts. The advantage of synchronous counters is that you don't get glitches, and if you do, they don't matter since the signals are only sampled on the rising edge of the clock. It's not so important for a time-of-day clock, but designing circuits to work at a hundred MHz is a lot easier with synchronous logic. -- David Forbes, Tucson, AZ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups neonixie-l group. To post to this group, send an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/neonixie-l/-/V5O-eepu_mAJ. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups neonixie-l group. To post to this group, send an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: [neonixie-l] Re: Design my own Nixie Clock?
Sparkfun isn't bad. Also Limor Fried (ladyada)'s site: http://www.adafruit.com Limor is a member of this group and a great person to deal with. Radio Shack... They're trying to make a comeback into this area of retail, time will tell if they succeed. My experience has been that they cost about 5-10x as much as anywhere else.. especially on small stuff like transistors/resistors - which I normally buy from mouser or digikey. The nice thing about radioshack is that they are immediate, no shipping time. The 74141 (the real kind) can be purchased from mouser. The Soviet clone is available on ebay and probably various member sites (sorry, I don't know who to plug here.. I only ever bought them from ebay). The blue dot problem is specific to IN-18 nixies, which you are unlikely to be messing with right out of the gate. 5v breadboard supply can be purchased from any of the getting started in electronics retailers as well as from many chinese/hongkong sellers on ebay. -Adam On 8/15/2012 3:23 PM, Sean wrote: So, right now I'm looking at taking John's advice and starting with a solderless board and some LED's. I see most of these basic parts at RadioShack. Is this a good place to get parts? Any better places? Also, where is a good place to get the 74141 drivers? And the 5V power supply? Any common items I can repurpose? On the topic of drivers, is the 74141 pretty universal for all Nixie tubes? I read somewhere about the blue spot problem being caused by using the wrong driver. Sorry if these are pretty simple questions! On Wednesday, 15 August 2012 13:22:37 UTC-5, nixiebunny wrote: On 8/15/2012 11:18 AM, John Rehwinkel wrote: A couple of years ago just for fun I started from scratch and designed a nixie clock circuit from the ground up (pun intended), that uses (6) 74HC160 counters. How do you do the divide-by-6 digits? Just use gates to reset the counters when they get to 6? I'm more used to using 7492 counters for that task, so I'm curious. - John Synchronous counters will accept a parallel data input and/or a reset signal. The tricky part is going from 12 to 01. You have to issue a load command with 0001 on the data bus to set it to 1. The '160 has an asynchronous reset, while the '162 has a synchronous reset. So the logic would be slightly different for those two parts. The advantage of synchronous counters is that you don't get glitches, and if you do, they don't matter since the signals are only sampled on the rising edge of the clock. It's not so important for a time-of-day clock, but designing circuits to work at a hundred MHz is a lot easier with synchronous logic. -- David Forbes, Tucson, AZ On Wednesday, 15 August 2012 13:22:37 UTC-5, nixiebunny wrote: On 8/15/2012 11:18 AM, John Rehwinkel wrote: A couple of years ago just for fun I started from scratch and designed a nixie clock circuit from the ground up (pun intended), that uses (6) 74HC160 counters. How do you do the divide-by-6 digits? Just use gates to reset the counters when they get to 6? I'm more used to using 7492 counters for that task, so I'm curious. - John Synchronous counters will accept a parallel data input and/or a reset signal. The tricky part is going from 12 to 01. You have to issue a load command with 0001 on the data bus to set it to 1. The '160 has an asynchronous reset, while the '162 has a synchronous reset. So the logic would be slightly different for those two parts. The advantage of synchronous counters is that you don't get glitches, and if you do, they don't matter since the signals are only sampled on the rising edge of the clock. It's not so important for a time-of-day clock, but designing circuits to work at a hundred MHz is a lot easier with synchronous logic. -- David Forbes, Tucson, AZ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups neonixie-l group. To post to this group, send an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/neonixie-l/-/V5O-eepu_mAJ. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups neonixie-l group. To post to this group, send an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: [neonixie-l] Re: Design my own Nixie Clock?
74141 drivers are out of production. eBay and surplus shops are the best place to get them. Also the Russian K155ID1 (epoxy) or KM155ID1 (ceramic) is an alternative and can withstand even higer voltages. The ceramic IC's have a lower (better) thermal resistance. RadioShack is more expensive as distributors as Farnell and Mouser, however these shops are only useful for modern components. Best is to search the internet. eric _ From: neonixie-l@googlegroups.com [mailto:neonixie-l@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Sean Sent: donderdag 16 augustus 2012 0:23 To: neonixie-l@googlegroups.com Cc: dfor...@dakotacom.net Subject: Re: [neonixie-l] Re: Design my own Nixie Clock? So, right now I'm looking at taking John's advice and starting with a solderless board and some LED's. I see most of these basic parts at RadioShack. Is this a good place to get parts? Any better places? Also, where is a good place to get the 74141 drivers? And the 5V power supply? Any common items I can repurpose? On the topic of drivers, is the 74141 pretty universal for all Nixie tubes? I read somewhere about the blue spot problem being caused by using the wrong driver. Sorry if these are pretty simple questions! On Wednesday, 15 August 2012 13:22:37 UTC-5, nixiebunny wrote: On 8/15/2012 11:18 AM, John Rehwinkel wrote: A couple of years ago just for fun I started from scratch and designed a nixie clock circuit from the ground up (pun intended), that uses (6) 74HC160 counters. How do you do the divide-by-6 digits? Just use gates to reset the counters when they get to 6? I'm more used to using 7492 counters for that task, so I'm curious. - John Synchronous counters will accept a parallel data input and/or a reset signal. The tricky part is going from 12 to 01. You have to issue a load command with 0001 on the data bus to set it to 1. The '160 has an asynchronous reset, while the '162 has a synchronous reset. So the logic would be slightly different for those two parts. The advantage of synchronous counters is that you don't get glitches, and if you do, they don't matter since the signals are only sampled on the rising edge of the clock. It's not so important for a time-of-day clock, but designing circuits to work at a hundred MHz is a lot easier with synchronous logic. -- David Forbes, Tucson, AZ On Wednesday, 15 August 2012 13:22:37 UTC-5, nixiebunny wrote: On 8/15/2012 11:18 AM, John Rehwinkel wrote: A couple of years ago just for fun I started from scratch and designed a nixie clock circuit from the ground up (pun intended), that uses (6) 74HC160 counters. How do you do the divide-by-6 digits? Just use gates to reset the counters when they get to 6? I'm more used to using 7492 counters for that task, so I'm curious. - John Synchronous counters will accept a parallel data input and/or a reset signal. The tricky part is going from 12 to 01. You have to issue a load command with 0001 on the data bus to set it to 1. The '160 has an asynchronous reset, while the '162 has a synchronous reset. So the logic would be slightly different for those two parts. The advantage of synchronous counters is that you don't get glitches, and if you do, they don't matter since the signals are only sampled on the rising edge of the clock. It's not so important for a time-of-day clock, but designing circuits to work at a hundred MHz is a lot easier with synchronous logic. -- David Forbes, Tucson, AZ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups neonixie-l group. To post to this group, send an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/neonixie-l/-/V5O-eepu_mAJ. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups neonixie-l group. To post to this group, send an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
[neonixie-l] Re: Design my own Nixie Clock?
On the 12/24 selectable version of the '160 clock, when it is in 12-hour mode, the thumbwheels must be left preset for 0100. Then, as David said, it loads that after 12:59:59 Chuck Original Message From: dfor...@dakotacom.net To: neonixie-l@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: [neonixie-l] Re: Design my own Nixie Clock? Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2012 11:22:37 -0700 On 8/15/2012 11:18 AM, John Rehwinkel wrote: A couple of years ago just for fun I started from scratch and designed a nixie clock circuit from the ground up (pun intended), that uses (6) 74HC160 counters. How do you do the divide-by-6 digits? Just use gates to reset the counters when they get to 6? I'm more used to using 7492 counters for that task, so I'm curious. - John Synchronous counters will accept a parallel data input and/or a reset signal. The tricky part is going from 12 to 01. You have to issue a load command with 0001 on the data bus to set it to 1. The '160 has an asynchronous reset, while the '162 has a synchronous reset. So the logic would be slightly different for those two parts. The advantage of synchronous counters is that you don't get glitches, and if you do, they don't matter since the signals are only sampled on the rising edge of the clock. It's not so important for a time-of-day clock, but designing circuits to work at a hundred MHz is a lot easier with synchronous logic. -- David Forbes, Tucson, AZ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups neonixie-l group. To post to this group, send an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. $4.95/mo. National Dialup, Anti-Spam, Anti-Virus, 5mb personal web space. 5x faster dialup for only $9.95/mo. No contracts, No fees, No Kidding! See http://www.All2Easy.net for more details! -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups neonixie-l group. To post to this group, send an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: [neonixie-l] Re: Design my own Nixie Clock?
... and my wife thinks that _MY_ clocks are tricky to set! On 8/15/2012 3:54 PM, chuck richards wrote: On the 12/24 selectable version of the '160 clock, when it is in 12-hour mode, the thumbwheels must be left preset for 0100. Then, as David said, it loads that after 12:59:59 Chuck Original Message From: dfor...@dakotacom.net To: neonixie-l@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: [neonixie-l] Re: Design my own Nixie Clock? Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2012 11:22:37 -0700 On 8/15/2012 11:18 AM, John Rehwinkel wrote: A couple of years ago just for fun I started from scratch and designed a nixie clock circuit from the ground up (pun intended), that uses (6) 74HC160 counters. How do you do the divide-by-6 digits? Just use gates to reset the counters when they get to 6? I'm more used to using 7492 counters for that task, so I'm curious. - John Synchronous counters will accept a parallel data input and/or a reset signal. The tricky part is going from 12 to 01. You have to issue a load command with 0001 on the data bus to set it to 1. The '160 has an asynchronous reset, while the '162 has a synchronous reset. So the logic would be slightly different for those two parts. The advantage of synchronous counters is that you don't get glitches, and if you do, they don't matter since the signals are only sampled on the rising edge of the clock. It's not so important for a time-of-day clock, but designing circuits to work at a hundred MHz is a lot easier with synchronous logic. -- David Forbes, Tucson, AZ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups neonixie-l group. To post to this group, send an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. $4.95/mo. National Dialup, Anti-Spam, Anti-Virus, 5mb personal web space. 5x faster dialup for only $9.95/mo. No contracts, No fees, No Kidding! See http://www.All2Easy.net for more details! -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups neonixie-l group. To post to this group, send an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: [neonixie-l] Re: Design my own Nixie Clock?
Also, I should add This is the reason that there is such a thing as a User Interface Engineer. ;) On 8/15/2012 4:05 PM, chuck richards wrote: That is why I vastly prefer the straight 24-hour only version of this circuit. It has simpler logic, one less gate package, and when you are done setting it, the thumbwheels must be preset to . The logic is simple: On the next clock pulse after 23:59:59, it loads whatever is left set on the thumbwheels. It is much easier to remember to always return the thumbwheels to all zeros than to set them to 0100. Original Message From: a...@jacobs.us To: neonixie-l@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: [neonixie-l] Re: Design my own Nixie Clock? Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2012 15:57:12 -0700 and my wife thinks that _MY_ clocks are tricky to set! On 8/15/2012 3:54 PM, chuck richards wrote: On the 12/24 selectable version of the '160 clock, when it is in 12-hour mode, the thumbwheels must be left preset for 0100. Then, as David said, it loads that after 12:59:59 Chuck Original Message From: dfor...@dakotacom.net To: neonixie-l@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: [neonixie-l] Re: Design my own Nixie Clock? Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2012 11:22:37 -0700 On 8/15/2012 11:18 AM, John Rehwinkel wrote: A couple of years ago just for fun I started from scratch and designed a nixie clock circuit from the ground up (pun intended), that uses (6) 74HC160 counters. How do you do the divide-by-6 digits? Just use gates to reset the counters when they get to 6? I'm more used to using 7492 counters for that task, so I'm curious. - John Synchronous counters will accept a parallel data input and/or a reset signal. The tricky part is going from 12 to 01. You have to issue a load command with 0001 on the data bus to set it to 1. The '160 has an asynchronous reset, while the '162 has a synchronous reset. So the logic would be slightly different for those two parts. The advantage of synchronous counters is that you don't get glitches, and if you do, they don't matter since the signals are only sampled on the rising edge of the clock. It's not so important for a time-of-day clock, but designing circuits to work at a hundred MHz is a lot easier with synchronous logic. -- David Forbes, Tucson, AZ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups neonixie-l group. To post to this group, send an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. $4.95/mo. National Dialup, Anti-Spam, Anti-Virus, 5mb personal web space. 5x faster dialup for only $9.95/mo. No contracts, No fees, No Kidding! See http://www.All2Easy.net for more details! -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups neonixie-l group. To post to this group, send an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. $4.95/mo. National Dialup, Anti-Spam, Anti-Virus, 5mb personal web space. 5x faster dialup for only $9.95/mo. No contracts, No fees, No Kidding! See http://www.All2Easy.net for more details! -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups neonixie-l group. To post to this group, send an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: [neonixie-l] Re: Design my own Nixie Clock?
So, right now I'm looking at taking John's advice and starting with a solderless board and some LED's. I see most of these basic parts at RadioShack. Is this a good place to get parts? It's certainly handy, but you can generally get things cheaper elsewhere. Of course, I'm spoiled - when the local Radio Snack folded, I showed up with a station wagon and a stack of $20s and bought out their carded stock, along with the pegboard holders for them: http://www.vitriol.com/images/house/partswall.jpg MY Radio Snack is open whenever I need it! Any better places? Also, where is a good place to get the 74141 drivers? And the 5V power supply? Any common items I can repurpose? Now you're talking! There are lots of electronic items that use LEDs, and any of them that you don't want any more are fair game. 5V power supplies are starting to become fairly common too - most plug-in USB chargers will work fine, and power supplies for USB hubs are also generally 5V. Eyeball any wall wart type supplies you have lying around - a fair number of things use them, especially computer stuff like cable modems and wireless hubs. If you have a local thrift store, they're often good places to get stuff like that. I've seen plug-in power supplies of all sorts of voltages for less than a dollar. I just snip off the connector and connect the wires to whatever I'm building - some solderless breadboards come with binding posts that make this easy. If not, solder some solid wire to the leads and plug that into the breadboard (electrical tape or heat stink tubing helps insulate the joints. Note that when I snip off connectors like that, I leave a few inches of wire on them, in case I need that kind of connector some day - I'm a total packrat. The usual DIY vendors (adafruit, sparkfun, and so forth) all offer 5V plug-in supplies for reasonable prices. Most of the on-line parts stores (Mouser, Digkey, Element14, Farnell, etc.). The 7441, 74141, and the Russian counterparts are pretty common, and there are several sources for those, including sites run by members of this list. If you just want one or two to get started, send me an email with your mailing address and I'll dig out a couple and send 'em to you. On the topic of drivers, is the 74141 pretty universal for all Nixie tubes? I read somewhere about the blue spot problem being caused by using the wrong driver. Sorry if these are pretty simple questions! Yeah, it'll cheerfully drive pretty much any nixie tube you're likely to play with. If you start getting into the oddball segmented displays or giant (coke can size) tubes, you'll need to drive them differently, but at that point, you'd have likely acquired a lot more knowledge about the subject in general. There are, of course, lots of other ways to drive nixie tubes too. - John -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups neonixie-l group. To post to this group, send an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: [neonixie-l] Re: Design my own Nixie Clock?
From my experience of modern devices I suspected that they are extinct. John K. [Some background in industrial engineering, ergonomics and design-for-manufacture (which of course musn't nullify the user and repairer aspects).] Yeah I know repair, what's that? Goes to show my age. - Original Message - From: Adam Jacobs a...@jacobs.us To: neonixie-l@googlegroups.com Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2012 8:39 AM Subject: Re: [neonixie-l] Re: Design my own Nixie Clock? Also, I should add This is the reason that there is such a thing as a User Interface Engineer. ;) .clip... -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups neonixie-l group. To post to this group, send an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
[neonixie-l] Re: Design my own Nixie Clock?
My first clock circuit was a 7 segment led, and I built it using a microprocessor, a 6502, I had little experience at the time and it wasnt easy. I suggest that you build a published design first then either modify it or build your own version, I'd also reccomend you build one that runs from low volts dc, mains powered stuff is kinda risky. On 16 Aug, 02:52, JohnK yend...@internode.on.net wrote: From my experience of modern devices I suspected that they are extinct. John K. [Some background in industrial engineering, ergonomics and design-for-manufacture (which of course musn't nullify the user and repairer aspects).] Yeah I know repair, what's that? Goes to show my age. - Original Message - From: Adam Jacobs a...@jacobs.us To: neonixie-l@googlegroups.com Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2012 8:39 AM Subject: Re: [neonixie-l] Re: Design my own Nixie Clock? Also, I should add This is the reason that there is such a thing as a User Interface Engineer. ;) .clip...- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups neonixie-l group. To post to this group, send an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
[neonixie-l] Re: Design my own Nixie Clock?
That is a cool processor, it was my first one to program in assembly language back in the early 1980's. It was used in the Acorn BBC computers, they came onto the market with a Z80 co-processor afterwards, which became my favorite for obvious reasons. Michel On Aug 16, 3:37 pm, dr pepper seaking.helicopt...@gmail.com wrote: My first clock circuit was a 7 segment led, and I built it using a microprocessor, a 6502, I had little experience at the time and it wasnt easy. I suggest that you build a published design first then either modify it or build your own version, I'd also reccomend you build one that runs from low volts dc, mains powered stuff is kinda risky. On 16 Aug, 02:52, JohnK yend...@internode.on.net wrote: From my experience of modern devices I suspected that they are extinct. John K. [Some background in industrial engineering, ergonomics and design-for-manufacture (which of course musn't nullify the user and repairer aspects).] Yeah I know repair, what's that? Goes to show my age. - Original Message - From: Adam Jacobs a...@jacobs.us To: neonixie-l@googlegroups.com Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2012 8:39 AM Subject: Re: [neonixie-l] Re: Design my own Nixie Clock? Also, I should add This is the reason that there is such a thing as a User Interface Engineer. ;) .clip...- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups neonixie-l group. To post to this group, send an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
[neonixie-l] Re: Design my own Nixie Clock?
First of all, I have no experience in circuit design, electronics, or programming. ... Any help would be greatly appreciated! Sean I'm with Adam. If this is your first time out of the gate, go for the discrete logic design. That is using 7400 series TTL, or 4000 series CMOS logic parts. Or the mix of the two. If you run them at 5V, then you can mix them together. Get copies of the TTL and CMOS Cookbooks, as mentioned before. They're great starter books. Here's an example of a 4000 CMOS logic clock: http://threeneurons.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/nixie6c_sch.gif Its from a kit I sell, but its on the web, so use it, if you want. It does mix TTL and CMOS. Most is CMOS, but the nixie drivers are TTL (Russian equivalent of 74141s). It includes a dekatron pendulum circuit, but I'd omit that, unless you want the extra complication. That part of the circuit includes the charge pump, U11 (4013) and the circuitry right of U11. I'd hold off on the Arduino, for now. It involves learning programming. You've got enough on your plate, for this pass. Maybe on your 2nd project, you may want to try a microcontroller. Then, an Arduino, is a great way to break into it. But, for now, one step at a time. I'd even avoid making your own HV switching supply, for now. Make that another project, for another day. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups neonixie-l group. To post to this group, send an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/neonixie-l/-/VmJkFr_G0JIJ. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
