Nixie tube driver schematic

The pair of nixie tubes mount on top of the nixie driver board which supports two in12a type nixie tubes in two phenolic sockets. This is the side that will receive all of the supplied. Proceed with care and youll have a working circuit in no time. Sometimes vfd or ac electroluminescent display drivers such as hv5812 or hv5530 are used to control nixie tubes but they are mainly suitable for dedicated applications and the lack of. Doayee is raising funds for nixie tube driver on kickstarter. If you are a maker or nixie enthusiast, you have probably used or had contact with a nixie tube drivers e.

The nixie driver board is designed to receive serial input from an external microcontroller arduino, etc. In this tutorial, you will learn how to control a nixie tube with an arduino nixie tubes were the only way to display numbers back in the 50s, before vfd and seven segments displays. You can connect the 12v source directly on the arduino by using the vin pin and any ground pin. Most nixie tube drivers require the obsolete and hard to find 7441 or 74141 ttl decoder. Note carefully to orient the nixie driver printed circuit board with the component placement information facing up. Is it mandatory to use the sn74141 chip or another high voltage ic driver like the. Driver board makes nixie projects easier than ever. A simple nixie display driver bobs electron bunker. Would be nice if the author included a pdf of the schematic and gerbers for the. Most nixie tube drivers require the obsolete and hard to find 7441 or 74141 ttl decoder driver ics, or else high voltage driver transistors. A simple way to implement a 6digit rgb backlit nixie tube display into. The complete nixie tube schematic key points on this schematic.

There are a variety of integrated circuits capable of driving nixie tubes, such as the vintage 7441, 7441a, and 74141 ttl chips, and modern highvoltage drivers such as those made by supertex. An anodescanning display, which even has a dimming control. Driver board makes nixie projects easier than ever hackaday. In this tutorial, you will learn how to control a nixie tube with an arduino. Nixie tube driver v1 easy to use only 3 control lines. An scrbased nixie driver, nice but scrs are expensive today. I am hoping to use theses tubes in a project for my art a level so you really would be saving my life if you helped. A nixie tube is a neon gasfilled tube, that has a wiremesh anode with various cathodes shaped like numbers or symbols. Basically these nixie tubes are very simple devices. See the boards in action in the video below, which features a. I sat down and sketched a super simple driver testing circuit to test them all.

That means i will show you how you can control nixie tubes with a high voltage dc power supply and then i will combine 4 nixie tubes with an arduino, a. Unfortunately, these drivers have their technical limitations for modern projects. If you apply a voltage u b the voltage drops across the currentlimiting resistor when one of the cathodes k0 k9 is tied to gnd. An scrbased neon lamp driver, usable as a cathode driver in a multiplexed circuit if there is a small interdigit pause to turn off the scrs. This time the driver has 22 outputs so you can control two nixie tubes. The corresponding numbershaped cathode is then covered with a pink to orange glow. Nixie tube driver ics keep dying electrical engineering stack. The driving circuits we will look at are rated with the following points to give a fast and easy overview about them. I wanted to produce a nixie display using easily obtainable parts well except for the nixies, and at the same time keep the parts count low.

The 7441 and its successor, the 74141 were very common nixie driver ics from the ttl era. The following schematic will explain, how they work. The driver can also be used for multisegment tubes e. Back in the 1950s they were used in computers, calculators, and laboratory equipment. Youre not cool unless you have a few nixie tubes sitting around, and youre.