I made this with my dad 7 years ago. It runs on a parallax propeller, a simple battery backed RTC, and some transistors. A few months ago I decided to fix the second jitter (seconds would vary between 0.7 seconds and 1.2 seconds) and the fact that I'd have to program the time on DST change every six months. I slapped a battery backed DS3231 temperature compensated RTC so it's accurate within a minute a year. I also used the 8 kHz output from the DS3231 and had the propeller count the edges so it knows exactly when to start the second. I measured the main loop delay and got it down to a few microseconds. Of course I added DST logic so I don't have to touch it again.
Was that enough enough? No I added dipswitches to change the UTC timezone offset and to enable/disable DST checking. The configurable timezone was necessary so that I could put in a GPS module. Finding timezones from GPS coordinates is not trivial for an embedded system so I went with the manual dipswitch approach. Okay so now I really need to never touch it again. The icing on the cake was using the 10 ns accurate pulse per second output on the GPS module to find the exact start of the second and to increase the tube multiplexing scan frequency to a few kHz. Now my little clock shows the time within a millisecond of the actual time without needing to get touched again.
Nixie Tube Clock
But user, what IS actual time?
Build it into a shitty briefcase like that kid did, so it can be mistaken for a bomb
That's pretty neat. I'd recommend using a flux transistor to interpolate the clock frequencies since the Weisenberg-Handstrum method usually results in lower accuracy and precision. I see that you used AF6 Nixie Tubes. Although AF6s are relatively reliable, they tend to draw more current that specified, which often leads to redshift and time drift. I'd recommed that you switch them to GTR7s for better reliability in the future.
>within a millisecond of the actual time
>on a nixie clock
enjoy looking at a blurry 8
At least I can be sure I will only be looking at an 8 exactly 22968 seconds a day.
...
You could have built better case so it doesn't look so ugly
Too bad you suck at joinery, else the thing would look pretty nice.
Yeah the case was hastily thrown together . Half inch slots seated a quarter inch back to hold a plexiglas plate. 45 degree angles with the idea of screws being used. I made it too shallow (6 inches) so the back doesn't fit. It was originally held together with hot glue but that's gone now. Since it's loose it's easy to work on. I should probably screw the walls together. Making a proper enclosure is something I'd do if I wasn't happy enough with it as is.
I like it OP. Making my own circuit board right now for my own.
post your woodwork you faggot nigger owl
Fancy. This was strip board and discrete transistors. How much do those drivers cost?
...
Yeah except for the IN-12s. Tubes aren't getting any cheaper.
You can still get metric shit tons for like $2 a tube. Also, IV-22s are cheap if you want to make a VFD clock.
The only thing I've ever soldered are molex into PCI-E extenders so GPUs don't drain power from the MoBo. But I want to make such clock. Where do I start? Thanks in advance.
What do the DriverN ICs do? What microcontroller is that? How is it programmed?
Asking because I'm trying to get in to EE but I don't know much, and this project looks interesting.
>cccp
nice
Buy a kit.
Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care?
about time?
Are you going to outsource the detonator, or DIY?
I do
but can you play DOOM on it?