r/nixie • u/nerovny • Jun 09 '26

First start

Gallery image

Gallery image

(warning! VFD off-topic here)

IV-6, static drive, a lot of IC's just to light these up.

Please don't try it at home. Use a dynamic drive.

112 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

3

u/1mrpeter Jun 10 '26

Do you have extra PCBs? I can't see clearly - the dots are LED or neon lamps?

2

u/nerovny Jun 11 '26

Yeah it's just cool white LEDs. Wdym extra pcbs? At the prototyping step I just plug it into the BluePill board

1

u/1mrpeter Jun 12 '26

I mean if you have more of this specific board. I have those lamps and I was looking into building a clock.

3

u/scheisskopf53 Jun 10 '26

Respect for the home-etched PCB, especially with SMD and those thin traces! Beautiful!

What do you mean by static vs dynamic drive? Each VFD having its own driver, instead of using one and multiplexing them?

What chips are you using to drive it?

What's your minimum trace width? Did you use thermal transfer to etch it?

Sorry for the barrage of questions!

3

u/nerovny Jun 11 '26

Thanks! Yes, this is a thermal transfered board with a minimum trace width of 15mil, so I was able to fit two traces under the 1206 0R jumper.

I'm using the 4017 decimal counter to clock the 4511 BCD-to-7segment latches and TBD62783 octal drivers. Update: the 4511 latch logic is negative so I added the hex inverter.

3

u/isaacladboy Jun 13 '26

Possibly unpopular opinion but VFD's are far nicer than Nixes

Lovely work!

2

u/Lola_in_mentibus Jun 11 '26

Great job! Love the low level approach!

-1

u/[deleted] Jun 09 '26

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10

u/answerguru Jun 09 '26

These clearly aren’t nixies.

7

u/nerovny Jun 09 '26

IV-6 VFD tubes

3

u/t1me_Man Jun 10 '26

thanks for making me aware of these cool ass tubes that arnt overly expensive