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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.
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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
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.
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/
What, are they running the webserver on Nixie tubes, too?
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
... 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.
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.
it would tell time in hex :P
Monstar L
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
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.
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?
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
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
Hate to self-promote, but here's my website with the nixie tube clock I was selling (before I ran out of parts). The most informative webpage for nixie tube related stuff is actually the Yahoo NeoNixie group, at Yahoo Groups. David Forbes, who designed the watch, is a regular contributor to the list, and is a great guy- very knowledgeable. I have learned a lot from the list, and I highly suggest joining the group to anyone even remotely interested in the technology.