Nixie and VFD Weather Clock
This project is mostly finished. I still want to modify some of the animations I made, and get a front panel made from aluminum rather than 3D printed.
https://github.com/nsafran1217/NixieWeatherClock
Nixie and VFD Weather clock
This clock is powered by an esp32 and features a IN-12 Nixie tube clock, a 12x10 INS-1 Neon Indicator matrix, and a 6 character IV-27 VFD display. The clock retrieves the time and weather from the internet at regular intervals and displays current or future weather. The weather display can be set to either future, current, or a rotation of both times. The current weather time frame displayed is indicated by an AL102 LED.
All of the displays including LEDs in this clock are soviet surplus, so I wanted it to look like an old piece of soviet military equipment. All of the front panel lettering and messages displayed on the alphanumeric IV-17 tubes are written in Russian.
This clock uses the three boards I designed, plus one additional board that was hand made.
Nixie Tube Board - A variation on my nixie tube clock board that is smaller and takes input on a connector.
IV-17 VFD Board
INS-1 Matrix Board
All board designs and Arduino libraries are available on GitHub.
For the HV power supply, I use a NCH6300HV by Omnixie. I used their older design in my first Nixie clock and was happy with its performance.
The clock is supplied with 12V from a USB-C connection. A small power trigger board requests 12V from the USB adapter.
When the adapter is first plugged in, 5V is sent to the clock. Some voltage makes it through the 7805 that supplies the esp32, but not enough to turn it on. After a few seconds, the voltage increases to 12V and the esp32 starts bringing up the other supplies. I have not seen any issues with this arrangement.
A buck converter generates the 2.4V for the VFD filaments and a boost converter makes the 25V for the anode voltage. 5V for the VFD and nixie board is provided by a linear regulator. This also feeds the 5V input on the esp32.