## Nixie Pipe – Modern Day LED Nixie Tube

Nixie Pipe is my interpretation of a modern day Nixie Tube – the cold-cathode vacuum gas-filled tubes from the 1960s.

The project came about when I decided to make a clock for my kitchen, with specific requirement for an egg timer function! I’ve always wanted to make a Nixie Tube clock but having completed a Nixie Tube project recently and one pipe failing after around 6,000 hours, I wanted to come up this something better. Something that didn’t require high voltages, special driving circuitry, could be easily interfaced and was modular, but which maintained the unique visual depth of a Nixie Tube. Continue reading Nixie Pipe – Modern Day LED Nixie Tube

## HDD Clock

With a cupboard full of old hard drives and some spare time, I recently set about making a persistence of vision clock. Using the platter of a hard disk, a slot is cut to allow backlighting to be emit. When the disk is spinning at 5400rpm+ and backlight constant, the disk appears opaque, as the slit is ‘refreshing’ each point of the revolution faster than our eyes. The trick is to measure the revolution time then flash or change the backlight colour at a fraction of this revolution time at the same point each revolution, in order to create a light segment. For example, flashing the light at a frequency twelve times the disk frequency in phase with the disk will create 12 light segments:

$f_{light}=12.f_{disk}=\frac{12}{p_{disk}}$

Expanding on this, one can create a light based clock, which takes some getting one’s head around on first sight!