Nixie Tube Clock: The Basic Bitch's Project

Introduction

A Nixie Tube is objectively the best way to generate light with electricity, and I don't care how much proof you have that I'm wrong.

Yes, a normal LCD / LED bulb is cheaper, safer, more flexible, and easier to setup/use. But all that stops mattering once you realise how cool nixie tubes look:

I mean look at this. This isn't a screen displaying numbers, or anything fancy. It's pure physics distilled into a vacuum glass housing. Accidentally crack that bitch, and you probably won't live to see the next day from all the toxic gases inside.

But anyways, hazardous fragility aside, this was the technological standard for electronic displays back in the 1950s, discovered in the era of vacuum tube technology; way before anyone even knew what the hell an LED or LCD was.
These were inside clocks, counters, displays and even lab measurement tools down in submarine barometers, or in lab electronic multimeters.

It's heartbreaking to say that the Nixie Tube era lasted only ~20 years. Once LEDs were discovered, these were quickly tossed away since they were a pain in the ass to manufacture. And so, the art of making Nixie tubes was lost to time alongside the countless glass-workers and engineers of the 70s.

...

So, why are we still able to acquire and talk about them now? Well, you can thank the edgy steampunkers who creamed their pants when they rediscovered this technology. Nixie Tubes slowly started coming back for a more hobbyist audience, who then started making clocks and various other contraptions. Nowadays, there are even modern startups that revolve around rediscovering Nixie Tube tech and manufacturing (i.e. Dalibor Farny) which I'm really happy to see.

One piece of good news for the average Nixie Tube enthusiast is that in the 20 year span where Nixie Tubes reigned, a huge amount of them were manufactured specifically in places like Poland, Hungary; and most notably the USSR. These are all still around nowadays, and especially Soviet Nixie Tubes are renowned amongst the hobbyist audience for being very long-lasting and of high quality.

So, phew that's a relief, there's tons of nixie tubes around, so can I get em for cheap? Unfortunately, real-world economics says no, since demand has kicked back up in recent decades and they're no longer in mass production. So, every year it becomes more and more expensive to get brand-new Nixie Tubes.

So yeah, let's enjoy them while they're still affordable enough.

Nixie Tube Sizes

There's tons of different manufactured Nixie Tubes that came from Poland, China, and other places. They all have their own special hue, sizes and whatnot, but I never bothered to go that deep into finding out about them.

Instead, I mostly read up about the USSR Nixie Tubes and learned a few things about finding and buying them.

Size vs Price

Unfortunately, the huge Nixie Tubes that you see people using as wall-clocks and whatnot are extremely expensive in 2023. For example, the biggest and most sought after Soviet Nixie Tube is called the IN-18, and it was used for high-grade military and research applications. This can cost you basically a minimum of $1000 USD to get a single brand-new one. For just one bulb. So, imagine trying to build a simple 4-digit display; you'd need to shell out like $4k.

You can get many Nixie Tubes that are in used conditions, since people salvaged them from old soviet displays and whatnot, but if possible a brand-new one would be really nice since you have pretty much a guaranteed longer lifetime without defects and higher quality.

So, the main tradeoff when looking at purchasing Nixie Tubes is "How big can I go before having to file for bankruptcy?"
For the average person, that will probably be the IN-14 tubes. For the more broke person, it'll probably be the IN-16s or even IN17s, which are significantly smaller.

Have a look at the following picture; which was the best one I found comparing different nixie tubes to each other:

For this project, I could only afford IN-14 tubes since daddy's money would run out with IN-18s. Honestly, I'm really happy with them and they're probably the second best choice following IN-18s.

Resources & Marketplaces

So, let's go over my favourite resources that I found while researching nixie tube projects:

Gra-afch - Now this sounds like one sus-ass site, but that's just due to it being Ukrainan. It's mostly a marketplace however had some bomb ass useful guides.

Ken Finnigan - Stumbled upon it randomly, but has a really useful guide from a long-time ago about his own nixie tube clock.

SurfNCircuits - This was key in helping me in designing a compact power supply for the nixie tubes.

r/nixie - Reddit gets a mention too, since I'm always browsing around for inspiration and ideas on housings and projects.

GreatScott & EEVBlog - Both are renowned EEE youtubers that messed with them before and the videos were really helpful in understanding the circuitry for driving and operating the Nixie Tubes.

Onto online marketplaces, there's only really 3 that are worth using in my opinion. Almost all marketplaces ship directly from Eastern Europe, so the shipping times are quite long to the UK; especially with the Russia/Ukraine conflict going. However, they all arrive eventually, so I wouldn't worry too much.

The following options have the biggest stock, with way cheaper options than usual and a lot of variety in options:

Gra-afch - this gets another shout.

Ebay - Tons and tons of stock, it's really insane. I ended up buying from here, and sometimes, there are really good deals on there to keep an eye out for.

Etsy - This is usually more expensive than ebay but I've found some steals on there before - so it is good often times.

Ze Game Plan

Once I stumbled on various online posts of people making their own Nixie Tube clocks, I just knew I had to give it a go. So, I immediately started writing down the main game plan and ideas I had, and after some research which is shown above I decided to order some tubes and design a clock.

The main project was going to be a standalone digital clock that hung in my room on the wall. I just loved the retro, vintage aesthetic it lent.
Ok, simple right? Nah, lemme make things more complicated and add my own twist on things.

1. Remote Connectivity and Control

The first challenge was having it connect to the internet. Why am I making life hard on myself? Let me give some context.

So, I have an Alexa in my room which I use all the time to set quick timers and whatnot - "Alexa set a timer for 15 mins to remind me to charge my buttplug", you know casual everyday helpful stuff like that. I thought it would be really cool if I could dual-purpose my Nixie Clock to suddenly scramble and display the countdown timer or stopwatch from my verbal cues to Alexa, or even through an application on my phone.

2. USB-C Power Delivery

Nixie Tubes are very high voltage devices; in the 170V.DC range. This is absurdly high and dangerous, so they all have dedicated supplies and drivers in order to drive them. I'm a EEE student though, and it would be a missed opportunity if I didn't learn about high voltage design in the design process. So, I was interested to see if I could design my clock to run off USB; something which is now only possible thanks to USB-C P.D. being able to deliver high enough currents and voltages to support a suitable boost converter.

3. Design and Manufacturing of Enclosure

This was gonna be the most difficult for me by far, since I am probably the shittiest person with their hands when it comes to woodwork, metalwork, any kind of physical work really - no experience or skills. I was gonna shelve this issue to deal with later, but I had some ideas i.e. one thing I was sure of is that I was going to be 3D printing a lot, and I also wanted to get brass and wood involved somehow since they were relatively easy to work with for beginners and there were tons of tools inside iForge facilities that I could use, and they had really high potential to look good with someone who knew what they were doing.

Systems & Electronics Design

My first step was to sit down and properly draw out the whole system overview from the electronics point of view. I ended up quickly making this quick diagram:

I debated for a while exactly how I wanted to configure the PCBs and components physically. I thought about combining all the above into one main PCB where the Nixie Tubes sat on the top, and components on the bottom side, but eventually decided that I wanted to separate all the power stuff since I felt the additional isolation from the Nixie Tubes would decrease the chances of me ruining one; and with it my day.

I decided that I could afford to place everything non-power related on the back of the Nixie Tube PCB. Although, I also decided to breakout pins especially related to the ESP side in case the RF stuff had issues with proximity to the Nixie Tubes.

Use the full scrambling graphic when setting a timer / stopwatch (https://www.reddit.com/r/nixie/comments/us5yp2/my_newest_build_the_program_is_still_missing_a/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)

Actual clock bit should be as thin as possible? Separate driver circuitry in box and put box out of sight? idk bro.

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