Project nixie

What?

Watch this space... But take a look here for a sneak preview.

OK, a little more can now be revealed. A few months ago I was doing a little bit of research into Tesla coils. I wanted to build one. If you've never seen one, take a look at http://www.electricstuff.co.uk/. Anyhow, I found out that whilst most of my projects are pretty harmless really, a Tesla coil is something that can get seriously out of hand quite easily. The Lovely Faye is quite tolerant of my tinkering, but I think I would have had a hard time trying to get away with building something that could quite easily see her collecting on my life insurance policy whilst attempting to rebuild the remnants of the garage.

However, while bimbling around the site, I found the nixie clock page. At the time, I thought that it would be a cool thing to do, but didn't really know where to go about getting hold of some of the more esoteric components. Things like resistors, capacitors etc. etc. I'm happy to get from Farnells. Out of production nixie tubes are a different matter though. Also there was the little fact that the design listed ran the entire board at mains voltage. Given my past record with electrical projects I thought I'd give this one a miss until the girls were grown up and weren't likely to say "Mum, where's dad? Oh, and what's that pile of ash doing on his shed floor?"

So really, that should have been the end of it. However, I was wandering around ebay a few days back, and noticed a complete nixie clock being sold by Steve Smith. A bit of digging later, I found his web site and more importantly, his nixie clock design and kit. A couple of emails later, and I'd found my latest project. Some money changed hands, and a large parcel of components were in the post to me.

Woohoo! I've got another project on the go! Well, I've now got three. Firstly there is this one. Then there's the control-line P-38 lightning that is currently about 25% complete in my shed. And then there's The Secret Project that will probably get me arrested but should be good fun.

Tuesday, 4th January

Hmmm. In a break from my usual tradition of starting a project, talking about it for months, pontificating, procrastinating and then doing nothing about it, this one seems to have progressed rather quickly.
In fact, it's finished. And it works. Um, which leaves me very little to talk about really. I might try and get a photo of the finished clock to post here, but I guess that's the shortest project that will grace these web pages.

There we are... A dreadfully out of focus picture of the finished thing. It looks a lot nicer than this in real life, but it's a bit tricky to take a picture of.