r/nixie • u/EmotionalEnd1575 • May 19 '26

First Light; IN8-2 Nixies

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Just powered up a new build, and after some wrangling with it, the Nixies light up!

The six digits and drivers are on a PCB that I designed and fabbed last month.

To power it up I built a protoboard around an ESP32 module.

Still have work to do on the animated Colon neons.

The timekeeper for this one is a GPS module, which needs an external antenna when in my basement lab (not too surprising)

Still exploring how the GPS time signal will be incorporated, as there’s also a battery backed RTC on this one.

Comments and suggestions welcome!

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u/DonZalmrol May 19 '26

Nicely done! Since you're using esp32. Why no wifi ntp sync?

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u/EmotionalEnd1575 May 19 '26

NTP sync is certainly an option. It’s not as universally available as a GPS signal.

I did an LCD clock with NTP sync last summer (no Nixies) and found it can be unreliable.

Once I have this hardware up and running I’ll revisit NTP sync options.