Several weeks ago my friend Brian convinced me to go to the Baltimore Hamboree and ComputerFest. I had a passing interest in amateur radio at the time, but didn’t really find anything I was excited about…… except this little ‘number tube’, which I later found out was a Nixie tube. Cost me all of .50 cents (kicking myself now for not getting several more.)

I really wanted to fire it up, but wasn’t sure how I’d work out the 170 Volts required. I was just getting into electronics in general and ordered an Arduino board from Adafruit that was just sitting around collecting dust.

I’ve started to follow HackaDay for inspiration and they mentioned that RobotPirate.com worked out an Arduino kit to power Nixie tubes. I immediately ordered it, and started to work on it when it arrived just a few short days later (in a cool little ESD safe bag).

Within a few hours I had the kit built and tested (no surface mount soldering, and not too many parts). I then fired up the Arduino environment and programed the board with the source provided from the RobotPirate/Arduinix site (worked perfect, only had to adjust the delay to keep each numeral lit). I had some minor issues that were quickly reminded with the help of the Robot Pirate bulletin boards. Also lucked out and found the datasheet for the National Nixie tube I had.

I’m sure its common for most projects, but most of my time went towards making a somewhat ‘finished looking’ kit. I found it fit very nicely in a old Apple Shuffe case, once the USB connection of the Arduino board was removed.

Some sticker residue was on the Shuffle case, tried to get it off with “Goof-off,” big mistake, started to melt the plastic case. (Why 1 side has a cloudy look to it.) If I could do it again I’d also be alittle more careful cutting the hole for the Nixie and power-cord, honestly abit sloppy. Either way, the end result is pretty cool, click the picture below for a link to the Flickr page with video of the device in action and other photos of the project.

Very fun project if you have some Nixies laying around, or want to get some and play around with the Arduino. This kit has the ability for this kit to power 8 Nixies, so many options for customizing this.

ArduiNix