Nixie Tube Display Built Around Arduino

One of the Minimalist Arduino kits along with some nixie tubes were us to create a nixie tube display which accepts serial inputs to set the display while containing a demo mode to test the tubes.

The construction begins with a pile of nixie tubes abandoned at the transistor. The PWM control of the tubes is possible by running some tests on a tube to see if it could be controlled with an Arduino and transistors. The Nixie tubes were mounted by using the cut out Lexan and tracing the tubes while the slots are cut out using a scroll saw. The project was wired up using the 20 gauge enamel-coated magnet wire which involves a lot of work getting the enamel off the wires for soldering.

The Minimalist Arduino on board and contains the working FTDI connector pins and the 180V power supply circuit board. In case a bootloader will be used in the future other than the default Arduino, an ICSP pinout has been added. The NPN transistors were also added followed by the PNP controlled by NPN Darlington arrays to the board PNP transistors colored wit silver on top.

Rest of the project