The Nixie Tube is an electronic device and its main purpose is to displaying numbers. Most of the time, the tube is normally filled with neon with a little mercury/argon at low pressure.

Basically, the nixie tube has ten cathodes which in the digits from 0 to 9. The average longevity of nixie tubes is about 10,000 hours.

Today, you will learn to create a clock with the nixie tubes.

For your information, the Nixie Clock uses the “Make Controller Ethernet” feature to go online and check the time, via the Network Time Protocol (NTP). After it determined the time, then it uses the digital outs on the “Make Controller” to enable it communicate with a pair of custom circuit boards. By this way, it drives the nixie and updates the time accordingly.

For each custom board, you need a pair of nixie tubes. Therefore, four nixie tubes (two for display the hours, while other two for minutes) use six digital outputs will be needed from the “Make Controller”.

If you want your Nixie clock looks fancier, you can add up two white LEDs in the two front corners as well. [Source]

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