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Science Meets Style In This Cathode Tube Watch
scope-n-SHOUT writes "The Nixie Watch displays the time on nixie tubes, a cold-cathode tube filled with neon, a little mercury and argon at a small fraction of atmospheric pressure. Nixies were used in many early electronic desktop calculators, including the first: the vacuum tube-based Sumlock-Comptometer Anita Mk VII in 1961. This two-digit wristwatch is designed for everyday use, being water-resistant and rugged, not to mention looking really retro-future cool. The watch requires no button pushing to operate - it shows the hours, minutes and seconds in sequence at the flick of the wrist. For the hardcore code tweaker, a programming adapter allows the GPL'd PIC firmware running the watch to be hacked up at will. The Nixie Watch is being sold in very limited edition, with each piece individually numbered and engraved."
It seems like a watch is the wrong form factor for this thing. The idea is really cool, and I think I might actually buy one if it was made as a desk clock, but I wouldn't want that enormous hockey-puck-sized-thing strapped to my wrist all day.
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where Science meets a total lack of style ;)
**Life is too short to be serious**
*flick* *flick* *flick*
Dammit... too far.
*flick* *flick* *flick*
11... No, I'm sorry, that's the minutes.
*flick* *flick* *flick*
Something 11.
*flick*
And 15 seconds.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Its simply amazing how what can be considered today as antique technology that would be sitting in some electronics museum to a "hip" new product. As Old Skewl goes, this is pretty geeky!
Maybe 4 smaller nixie tubes, but this first hours then minutes then seconds display on two digits looks more like a bad high school science project than a must have geek item.
Letter To Iran
This fabulous Nixie Watch could be yours if... the price is right.
Me: Hey, honey - take a look at this watch.
My Lovely Wife (MLW): Oh - uh, what is that?
Me: Cathode ray tube watch.
MLW: Oh. How much is it?
Me: About $400.
MLW: $400 for that?
Me: Yeah. And you know what?
MLW: What?
Me: That is the exactly opposite of what kind of a watch I want you to buy me for Giftmas someday.
MLW: Got it.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
It's been done before. And with more digits.
Terry Gilliam would have loved to have had these in Brazil !
Cathode Tube Watch: $395
Tiger Print Suit: $2530
Authentic Aviator Goggles: $125
Realizing that you have the fashion sense of Helen Keller: Priceless
MoM++ - A Classic Expanded - [Master of Magic 1.5]
http://mompp.sourceforge.net/
Wow! /me pulls out plastic.
Really, this is just sad. It's ugly too: look.
Meh
What, are they running the webserver on Nixie tubes, too?
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
what the fuck is a TUPIDMERD or a saicanream???!?!?!?!?!
More like impracticality meets extravagance.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
You could cram a lot of PDA into that beast instead.
Just wondering. Did you get any decent amount of money for that huge ad? I sure hope you did since this probably sent more traffic their way then anything else has in the past.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
The "sold out" desk and wall clocks are MUCH cooler.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
... if only for its homebrew-deco appeal. According to the .PDF copy of the user manual on the site, the software that runs it is GPL'ed and fully user-compilable/modifiable. The complete schematic is provided with a nifty discussion of the underlying circuit theory.
Aesthetically, yeah, it's hard to argue that it's not a piece of junk. The first thing you notice -- because your eye expects to see two more Nixie tubes -- is the huge battery next to the two that are present. That should have been a stack of heavy-duty lithium coin cells mounted out of sight. If they'd gone that route, then the housing could have accommodated three tubes... which 85% of the time is all you need, right?
It doesn't deserve the bashing it's getting on a "News for Nerds" site, at any rate. Everybody reading Slashdot has scarier stuff than this in their (psychic?) basements.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
that is one fucking painfully ugly watch.... I have yet to see on of these "nerd" watches I would actaully wear... as others said... this thing with hours/min..etc as a wall clock could be kewl... but as a watch it is only a good idea ...... if you find yourself constantly having to fight off the ladies with a stick and you are looking for sure fire sex repellant.
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
"Nixie" is just a genericized trademark.
[N]ame brand word association is one of the more subtle threats to this nation's free trade. It gives the larger, well-known companies an unfair advantage. I'm doing my part to keep the playing field level by weaning people off referring to generic products with brand names.
And yes, even though all the manufacturers are out of business, the principle here is still really important.
When I was in the military some years back, we were still using some test equipment with these tubes as displays. The subtle beauty of them is when the digits would cycle through a sequence, you'd notice the position/depth change as it changed to a new digit. Coupled with the fadeout of the deactivated digit, it was a fascinating to watch.
Your hybrid is not saving the environment. Its purpose is to make you feel good about buying something.
is a watch like this one, but instead of using nixie tubes, it would use those green-blue displays also used in some old calculators. Does it exist ?
Um.. ok. I've seen plenty of cathodes on tubes -- even touched one or two in my lifetime (never intentionally), but why in Hell would anyone want to sit around and WATCH one?
Uhm, I think I'd prefer a watch like this: http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/watches/6a17/
it would tell time in hex :P
Monstar L
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonlucas/1580799/
1. slap retro-futuristic watch on skinny, hairy model 2. ?? 3. profit
Oh so close to a haiku, better luck next time.
Just imagine if this was hacked to display text two letters at a time. With rhythmic motions of the wrist it could output pornographic text. This would me a stellar stocking stuffer.
... cheap advertising. All that was missing was a "step right up" intro.
http://www.led-watch.com/
No sig today...
Woo Hoo!! I can tell what hour of the day it is now without looking at the sun. This is really cool ancient technology, especially since I can't find a reasonably priced watch that can tell me what time it is. I'm tired of watches that give me weather reports and time zone data and underwater depth readings and everything but the time of day. This is the one for me. Not very granular, but at least a step in the right direction.
Um, yeah. You have got a lot of sit-down-and-think time in front of you if there were actually two other "Bananatree" users before you and you STILL chose to become number three. I'm not even including the stream-of-huh? statement you made.
Originality just isn't your strong suit, is it?
Everyone complaining about it being ugly is clearly not a nerd, since a nerd doesn't care whether a watch is ugly.
For $29.99, I rather get this time keeper.
http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/watches/6e72/
Just look at those gorgeous layout and colors... It's just too bad, it's not on sales any more...
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
Having them in Fallout? I think they'd make ane excellent adition to the post-nuclear-war-gizmo-mania-galore!
Science Meets Style... and Style walks away with a bloody nose.
Seriously people.. this does not look cool, neat, retro, funky or any thing other than an ugly lump on the end of an appendage.
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
Oh so close to a haiku. Better luck next time. Winter smells like snow.
Does it come with an optional B-battery carrying case?
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
Apart from the bulk, battery life is "a few months" - reminiscent of the first digital watches which used LEDs, so the display had to be turned on to read the time. Still, an unsubtle but doubtless effective bit of late product p1mpage in time for Christmas ;-)
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
There's been a very impressive Nixie wristwatch at http://www.amug.org/~jthomas/watch.html for quite a while now - he made it in 2001. The fact that it doesn't even use a microcontroller makes it that much cooler. Less flexible because you can't re-program it, but far more in keeping with the theme of the project.
Seriously, years ago I actually encountered a Geiger counter (don't ask) which used transistors to drive Nixie tubes. In those days there were no high voltage transistors, so it worked around the idea that the Nixies turned off at a certain voltage, therefore the VEBO of the transistors did not need to exceed the difference between the high voltage rail and the Nixie cutoff voltage.
Did you notice the words "Geiger counter" there? Yes. Of course, if the radiation reached a level sufficient to ionise the gas in the tubes, they stayed conducting. So turning a small gamma source on the tubes themselves blew all the output transistors.
Pining for the fjords
If I wanted to buy a watch that guaranteed I would never get laid, I certainly wouldn't have to spend that much on it.
"1,2,5!" "No, 3 sir!" "3!!"
We have really old (and back then expensive) frequency counters here that use the same display technology.
Its basically a glow discharge tube like you can find them as gadgets sometimes (like a hearth, or a number or so glowing). The glow is around the kathode, which can be formed however you want.
So this tubes have 10 different kathodes in one tube, sorted by visibility (to but the "big" shapes back as to not hinder the view to other ones). All in all, you can see that they are in different planes (about 5-8mm or so, which makes neat effects for a frequency counter (as the digit seems to jump rapidly, seemingly randomly back and forth in 3d-space)).
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Arnold, who never had a cool hairstyle in his life, just killed the guy who was sporting this fro in the early 80s....
'twas set to HTML.
I forgot the
's.
Wow, it's the outfit Bob Calvert dreamed of but could never afford!
This Bob Calvert reference was brought to you by a stubborn desire to refer to the things that nobody else bothers to refer to. I would type more but I'd hate to give away too many clues to the sonic conspiracy.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Making a nixie watch is enormously complicated - the power issues are complex - the tubes need 180VDC at a few mA to strike, but the batteries must last for 6 months or so. Each watch is hand made and uses lots of SMD components - the tubes are indeed not the smallest available as they are not made any more, so you can only use "common tubes" - the earlier 4-tube watch mentioned used JAN7009/4998 tubes which are extremely rare (the builder found a one-off small batch at a hamfest), and can't be used for commercial construction. It's not ideal, using these tubes, but it does work. Other common small tubes, like the Russian IN-17s have other problems (they are too deep). I actually have one of these watches (a prototype), and it attracts nothing but admiration, even from my wife & daughter. You do need big wrists, though (I'm 6' 4" tall and 103kg)... David only did this as a bit of fun - he deserves credit for producing something that's fun, with little profit (if any) for an awful lot of hard work. Nicko
According to the .PDF copy of the user manual on the site, the software that runs it is GPL'ed and fully user-compilable/modifiable.
Go for it!
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
http://www.electricstuff.co.uk/nixiegallery.html
i e.html
m ann-Digital-Roehren-Clock/Digital-Roehrenuhr.htm
http://www.stefankneller.de/elektronik/nixiegaler
And the very best, a digital clock where the whole logic, not only the display, is built with tubes:
http://www.jogis-roehrenbude.de/Leserbriefe/Brueg
... after 3 weeks of wearing this watch your hand goes black and drops off.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
He looked at lithium cells, but the supplier would not let him have samples, and the MOQ was in the order of 10,000 units (or $$, I can't remember), so the "common camera battery" route was taken... Again, it's a compromise. The reason the tilt-detector (a solid-state Analogue Devices unit) is used is that the HT converter is only activated whn the watch is at 45 degrees or so the the Earth. As you tilt the watch, you can just hear the HT boost converter starting (a very slight whstling) if you put your ear to the watch... Assuming the HT supply is 90% efficient (typical for this sort of unit), to get 180VDC at 3mA, you need about 200mA at 3V from the battery - Obviously you can't let that run continuously as any battery would be flat in a few hours, hence the tilt-detectors. Everything is a compromise... but it really does work... Nicko
How about a watch that displays the time digitally in colors matching the resister color code?
12:17 == brown red brown blue
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
I was disappointed when I read:
I can't understand why in the year 2005 every digital watch does not include a tiny radio receiver to pick up the WWV or GPS radio time signals. Then every watch will be accurate to within a second or two, all the time (as long as the wearer goes outside every so often if it's a GPS watch), and there's no need to set it - unless you're telling it the local timezone offset from UTC.
The editors need to start acting like editors and edit! If an ad-post occassionally makes through, then alright, I understand, but ones like this one are obvious. It reads like an ad and the only link to the watch is the one to the manufacturer.
I've heard other people say it and I'm starting to agree: a moderation system for stories that make it to the front page might not be a bad idea. If the editors won't do their job, then let us do it for them.
Want to try and wear this through the airport. I could see the security flipping out right now..
And perfect, too. This is the perfect product model. Don't laugh. Here's my complex hardware thing (that has value) and you get free source code for it.. have fun if you want :)
A perfect business model in my book.
-=[ place
Did you see the video?
If that's not an evidence for bigfoot then I don't know what is.
Defining Statistics and Social Research
If you run at 88 miles an hour while wearing it, do you go back in time? Or does it require doing something else at 88 miles an hour... ha ha
stuff |
But some of the desktop clocks are fantastic.
Or are you on house arrest?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I'll bet that baby eats batteries for breakfast. Just imagine buying one for the paltry price of $395 and the spending another $1,200 on batteries because everyone who spots it while you walk by wants to see it in action.
Why do I get the feeling the developer is in cohoots with Union Carbide?
A friend of mine has made quite a few nixie clocks, including one that sync's its time to WWVB. They are cool to watch.
SPF support for most open source mail servers can be found at libspf2.
woz's watch costs about six times as much as this cathode watch.
MORTAR COMBAT!
There's been a very impressive Nixie wristwatch at http://www.amug.org/~jthomas/watch.html for quite a while now - he made it in 2001
Actually, if you read the article (or actually the website), you'll see that the maker of the current watch was "inspired" by the watch you link to above. Now the above watch is chez cool, but the maker of the new watch wanted to basically shrink the original watch down to something that one could, somewhat, practically wear on your wrist. Other than the # of digits compromise, I think he did a very good job. To say that one is "cooler" than the other, I think is a mistake, as they both had different goals in mind, and both reached some very impressive goals.
I tried to "see it in action" and I totally just saw snow (just like I expect from a CRT), and then it threw my browser outa wack! Stupid watch!
Well whatever. Who cares. This reminds me of those stupid phones Japanese people like to carry around--an old school phone handset hooked up to their cell phone.
Yeah, lets go old school. Next I'm gonna put a steam engine in my car...
Douglas Adams had it right... From HGttG:
"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea."
If you want the ULTIMATE in clunky, difficult to wear watches, you need one of these:
:)
http://www.leapsecond.com/pages/atomic-bill/
One hell of a lot more accurate than that nixie tube toy!
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
Is it slash dot, or just some of it's readers?
You, sir, are stupidier than I.
Physics is imagination in a straight jacket. ~John Moffat
I'd love to see a similar idea put towards a desktop calculator that used vacuum tubes instead of transistors and cathode tubes instead of LEDs. Yes it would be big, hot, and slow... but it would definitely be a geek conversation piece.
Phrrrp, whatever. You want to get one of these, like me: http://www.tokyoflash.com/viewwatch53W2LED-watches .html
And yes, I can actually read it whilst xxxx'd
I have one of these. It may not be for everyone but I bought it because:
./ers don't really appreciate this.
- It uses nixie tubes. I think they are the nicest of all digital display technologies. I like the fully formed numbers and I like the 3-dimensional movement as the digits change.
- It was designed and manufactured by one person. I think that is quite an accomplishment and makes for a much more personal and unique timepiece.
- The designer released the firmware under the GPL. This is the only watch in the world that I know of that can be reprogrammed by its owner. The designer put a lot of neat features into the firmware and given the uC is a PIC this is no small feat. I'm surprised more
- It is a fairly complex design including a 180 volt power supply and an accellerometer to trigger the display. There are several PCBs assembed together in 3D in this watch which I like.
- It is large and not for everyday use. However the size and quality of the case make it stand out. I wear watches to be noticed and this one certainly is. I added a gel sheet to the watch which accents the display and obscures the battery making for a better display.
I've looked at most of the mass-produced "geek" watches and retro LED watches (ok so I did buy a Zeon) but most of them look and feel cheap. And there is nothing special about their design or function.
This watch is like an expensive two-seat sports car and can be appreciated as such. You take it out on the weekends for a fun. You don't take it to work everyday.
Neat idea, but it's really quite ugly, and much too big. The "cool for geeks" factor is high, but the design of the actual watch looks like a prototype, not something ready for sale.
Keep trying, guys. Once you find something that's interesting and looks good, you'll tap into a huge market of gals buying gifts for their geeky guys, as well as the smaller market of geeky women who will want one of their own.
Seeing these tubes brought back the memories of playing pinball in my local snackbar again. Another post here mentions the really cool effect you get when te numbers change rapidly, as the filaments are placed at different depths you get this nice depth change effect....
The Bigger The Headache The Bigger the Pill
You know, so it could be worn to dress-up parties and what-not and not be anachronistic.
Blar.
Can you imagine trying to explain to any TSA employee why the thing on your wrist looks like a bomb timer from a bad movie?
I bought some segmented alphanumeric Nixie tubes from a surplus dealer, just after the last ice age. Drove them with TTL and 180 volts. Very visible, but they just didn't seem retro then.
I don't remember the make or model of this calculator - it may have been a Texas Instruments, not sure. I do remember that it had the regular layout of keys, and a switch or two to set a decimal position or something like that, and it plugged into the wall - but all in all, a very basic calculator, with the exception of this: it had a memory feature. Plugging it in, nothing on it worked, it just displayed all 9's - on a bunch of glowing nixie tubes.
Now, I didn't know what a nixie tube was at that time, but I knew that the display was old, and that it was a tube display. I was thinking it was similar to a neon display (which of course it is), so I thought that piece was neat and all. But - it didn't work! It was a non-working calculator. But that memory feature bugged me, because I could tell it was old, and there was date on it (from sometime in the very early 1970's - prior to the 4004). I knew it didn't have a bit of RAM in it - so, how did it store things. In my zeal to understand (and my ignorance of youth), I decided I would take it apart, keep what was good and throw the rest away.
That calculator is long gone - I ended up saving nothing of it (cringe), but what I found was very cool, and I only appreciated it later as my knowledge of computer and electronics history grew as I learned more with age. First off - the entire logic of the calculator was done in transistors - not a chip in sight. This was something I was impressed to see when I first saw it, but it didn't really strike me at the time as something I should save. Transistors didn't interest me that much - I could buy them cheaply anywhere. There was also the driver system for the (what I would later learn) were the nixie tubes. I kept the tubes for a little while after that, but they too eventually were thrown out, as well (I couldn't see any use for them at the time). They were all lined up and supported in a fitted metal chassis with rubber shock mounts, and the wires were individually soldered to the drivers and logic system - no sockets there! Then, there was the metal box, with four wires coming out of it.
This piece intrigued me - what was this thing? Could this be the memory? With only four wires, how could that be? The box itself was alluminum, and was sealed airtight - no screws or such to easily open it, just a metal box with four wires. So, I did what any stupid kid would do when confronted with such a device - I took a hammer and screwdriver to it (nowadays, if that was something I wanted to get into, and I didn't care about it like I would now, I would use a vice and a hacksaw, maybe a dremel too, but I didn't have those at the time in my apartment). I punched a hole in the side, expecting to hear a vacuum released, but I heard nothing. Using other tools, I got it ripped open, and what I found inside was curious: Where two of the wires entered was some kind of device hard mounted to the alluminum case, with a (steel?) wire coming from the center, which itself was suspended and coiled inside the box, with the other end connected to a similar device for the other two wires. What was this, and how could it be memory. I ended up throwing it away, along with most of the rest of the calculator - eventually, it all became trash.
Have I told you how much I now kick myself for this? It was only much later that I realized what that alluminum box was, and that maybe that calculator could be fixed, and was probably worth something to a collector. The box was this: a very compact implementation of an old form of electronic computer memory, the serial delay line. Original delay lines on computers that had them in the 1940's used acoustic tr
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
well, it certainly would appear that someone isn't very really retro-future cool
I, for one, am working on a 35-mm film base camera watch. Don't be left behind in the dust man, - get with the retro-future cool movement you square.
ôó
I have one of these Cathode Corner watches. What you all have to appreciate is the incredible feat of technical engineering that this watch represents.
The tubes are over 30 years old. I am glad David chose to use a tube which has a reasonable supply, as the UK customs broke one of my tubes apart looking for bombs, or Bin Laden. I was able to get a replacement fitted.
The case is anodised aircraft-grade lightweight alumin(i)um machined to a high specification. It is not heavy and you don't notice it when you are wearing it. Yes maybe it is a little large by watch standards, but what fun. Genuine jaw-dropping high-voltage neon on your wrist. It also has a precision neoprene gasket to keep moisture out and a precision fitted glass crystal. The strap is a beautiful quality leather item which complements the watch.
The electronics represent as good a compromise as is possible, given the various requirements of long battery life, reliable high voltage firing of the tubes and good timekeeping. It's not so easy technically to do this stuff. The two axis accelerometer is a nice touch. You set it to your preferred viewing angle and when you want to see the time, it shows. The miniaturisation and small component size inside has to be seen to be believed. There's even a programming socket and open source code, should you want to hack your own features into the watch.
It's a truly great watch and a remarkable achievement. I am happy and proud to own one. Its been going for about 9 months now without a hitch.
Get your wallets out and don't be so mean. This thing is a true work of art.
John
I hang my head in shame when I read some of the posts here. Isn't the journey of hacking together some technology from design to completion what
Did anyone comment on the firmware? or even look at it & wonder how the watch works at code level? To me the biggest leap D made was a) making the firmware hackable & b) taking the trouble of getting a 3D designer to redisgn the cosmetics & rebuild the guts to fit into the case. Masterpiece.
I've added the url to Make blog where they really do get off on making things from scratch. Instead of worring about trivial things like fashion trends & consumer item aesthetics
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
Good prop for a Lensman movie. I think E.E. Doc. Smith would be pleased.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Looks like D's already on Make. Read about the geeky lad here & check out those pics.
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
It just works. It's been scratched, dropped, banged against walls and metal objects, and through one major car accident. It survived three summers of vibration and sweating when I mowed lawns as a teenager for spending money, which killed the Timex that preceded it in a single season. It's been through the shower, rain, pools, etc. God alone knows how many times. Other than the battery, O-ring, and the band which is a cheap metal expandable I bought to replace the crappy plastic band the watch came with, it's still completely intact compared to when I bought it.
Some of the LED segments have gotten dim in fluorescent light, but they're still readable. It still keeps time with the manual-specified accuracy of 30 seconds per month, as far as I can tell. Certainly I only set it a couple of times a year and I don't remember it ever being more than a minute or so off. If it should ever break or, I dunno, they quit making batteries to fit it or something, I guess I'd buy another watch. Probably just the current version of this one, though.
It's simple, it's unobtrusive, it's accurate, and it's reliable. To me, for a watch, that is the definition of style.
-- Old Man Kensey
LED watches are actually more energy efficient than Nixie tubes. A Nixie tube *IS* a CRT. So my watch battery lasts months even.