Summary

about 1 pm, Monday, January 21, 2019

Today is a minor holiday where I am, so that means I have a new opportunity to shirk more productive activities and instead pursue frivolous ones.

For today's mini-project, I am going to realize something no-one needs:  an Internet-enabled Nixie Tube Clock.  Or more accurately, I am going to Internet-enable an existing clock that has a serial port and accepts commands.

Deets

Earlier today, I was reviewing some of my old web site accounts and I noticed one for ThingVerse that I had not touched in several years.  It was used for a demo I did for a friend who was wanting to make a data logger.  It just took a reading from a DHT22 and posted it to ThingVerse.  It was implemented with a NodeMCU board (and since it's been posting the temperature and humidity in the lab for the past 3 years, I guess it is reasonably robust!)  This made me think of another thing....

I have a few Nixie clocks, and one is a bit interesting in that it is just a bar of IN-12s -- no spacing of the digits or little NE-2s to punctuate the digits.  Instead, it is a 10-digit bar, and non-lit digits provide the spacing.  Additionally, this clock can be sent digit sequences over a serial port which will cause those digits to be displayed literally, instead of the usual clock display.  Why?  Who knows.  A 'like' counter for youtube?  Or a twitter?  Your kickstarter raise?  Who knows -- you just have to supply the digits.

This particular clock in this case is one made by 'Sparkletube', who runs https://www.kosbo.com.  I'm sure it is a labor of love for M(r|s). Sparkletube, and stock is catch-as-catch-can.  Mine is a 10-digit unit, but there are also 8-digit ones as well.

I have a kind of 'art nook' in a high place on a wall in my living room where I thought I could put it.  The IN-12 digits are not as big and sexy as the unobtanium IN-18, but it should still be quite readable across the room.  Of course you'll never be able to get to the buttons up there, and these things tend to keep rather poor time as it is, so it will be even less fun than the normal running around the house when we change to summer time and back.

My original intention was to use some stray board and facilitate Ethernet via an ENC28J60 or something, but that was going to be more than a day project, and hence why I never put forth the effort.  So it has been sitting in a box in my lab for years, yearning for the day that it will be loved and on display for all.

So why not use one of the NodeMCU boards?  Because they were so cheap, I had bought 5, so I had plenty extras on-hand.  So, in theory, just add some wire, solder, and code, and then maybe I will have the Nixie clock on my local network?  And by gateway, the World?!

Let's see if I can do it as a one-day project, before I have to go back to gainful employment....

Next

Getting familiar with the Nixie clock.