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Open Source Russian Vacuum Fluorescent Tube Clock
ptorrone writes "Hacker extraordinaire Ladyada (whose open source hardware projects we have discussed before) has just published a complete how-to, with design document, on making your own open source Russian vacuum fluorescent clock. The vacuum fluorescent tubes aren't as dangerous as (high-voltage) Nixie tubes, and there seem to be more of them available in the world. If you're not interested in building a clock from scratch, you can also pick up a kit version. All the schematics, source code, and files are available on the project's page."
I've built Nixie clocks, and there shouldn't be any software involved at all. You can get clock ICs cheaply enough, a microprocessor is overkill for this kind of project.
Because most people don't the skills needed to actually build it. Go back to your corner.
Sigs? We don't need no steekin Sigs!
A long time ago I redirected my child interest in destroying and rebuilding electronics to tinkering with virtual constructs.
So I shouldn't be interested in "hardware hacking"; however, too many hours of fallout, too many zombie movies and too many post apocaliptic novels have given me a degree of interest in that part of the engineering poetry.
Time to go find an open source rifle made from old car parts.
Most people don't the skills to write.
First off, LadyAda is awesome. I really don't need to say any more than that.
I've been wanting to make something like this for a while now. A year or two ago, I bought a big box of the same old Soviet 'vacuum fluorescent indicator' tubes, but I was always having trouble working out the hardware involved, especially the power supply. Using a boost converter is a great idea which might have occurred to me if I had had any experience with them at the time. (Other projects have since taken priority)
My enclosure design wasn't quite as...ah, 'conservative' as a nice simple laser-cut plexiglass box though :) http://media.giantpachinkomachineofdoom.com/blog/2008-06/images/clockwip3.png
Now I'm going to have to take another try at it! :D
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
IMHO this has more geek points.
Here's a gadget that is cool (from a geek point of view), that you can make yourself (provided you have the skills, you should as a geek), that makes other geeks go "ooooooh" in envy and awe, that glows in flurescent blue (that by itself is already enough) and you dismiss it as something you wouldn't want.
Please drop your geek card in the shredder by the door on your way out, will ya?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You could just rip the clock out of an old VCR.
I'm not sure that the "Open Source" moniker has any relevance to hardware projects like this. In software, the "source code" is the actual raw material that a complied application is made of. In hardware, the "source" is physical electronic components.
I guess you could call the freely-available plans and schematics "the source" but that doesn't make much sense, because without hardware components, you can't compile it into a working device. So the term doesn't really apply, especially as we've had freely available electronic schematics for decades, and nobody ever called them "open source." This terminology just seems to be a way to seem cool and trendy.
... and then they built the supercollider.
I had a digital watch in 1979 that could do a stopwatch and day of the week. Do you honestly think it had a programmed CPU in it? It was all hardwired TTL logic on a single chip. You can do quite a lot with hardware alone - ask the creators of Pong.
Why not? Can nothing be done to correct this?
Has anyone else noticed that actual female geeks are outnumbered by trannies? linuxchix.org is all ex-men, not an actual born woman as far as the eye can see. Yeah, that's how to fix gender imbalance: declare the men as women. And you thought it was a const, not a variable.
I wonder what happened to the nuke that was sitting behind the timer.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
the PWM is hardware controlled and there's a WDT its as reliable as any 'off the shelf' chip...even 555's latch up if set up wrong ;)
Yup! If you look at the schematics or design document you will see how this works - its described in detail there but basically: If power is unplugged, the microcontroller kills the display and runs at 50uA off of a coin cell for a couple of weeks until power is restored. the low power RTC is used when theres a blackout or the clock is moved, etc. Its a big pet peeve, all clocks should do this!
it is firmware controlled but its set once, its not like an interrupt has to go off at the exact right time. AVRs are pretty good about not freaking out as long as you have BOD set and a WDT (which it does). also, to make the clock display brightness adjustable you cant just use an RC oscillator...how would you set the PWM duty cycle? could it *possibly* screw up? sure. just like logic chips sometimes die or glitch. but its not medical equipment, theres no interlocks, its a DIY desk clock kit in a plastic enclosure.
That's not retro; it has a CPU in it. Look at this all vacuum tube digital clock where all the logic is tubes. 103 tubes.