Nixie Show with SPI Interface

Whereas a Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) interface may sound redundant, it’s a implausible solution to get two gadgets speaking. There are a variety of SPI show choices out there, however as Tony Oddwires factors out, serial choices for this form of old-school show expertise are few and much between. Tony due to this fact got here up with a superb SPI Nixie show, which implements perfboard wiring utilizing a slightly distinctive technique.

Building of Tony’s challenge began with a 6 x 9 cm FR4 prototyping board, which is break up up into 4 smaller boards: a Nixie holder, 170 volt PSU, a excessive voltage driver, and a Microchip PIC16F15344 microcontroller part. These are every wired up with the suitable peripherals, and stacked on prime of each other for inter-board connections.

What’s fascinating about this perfboard implementation is that as a substitute of soldering (30 AWG) wires every time they contact a gap, they’re additionally handed by means of as wanted at as much as 4 wires per gap. Whereas this technique would seemingly require vital psychological structure gymnastics, the outcomes are fairly fairly.

The stacked perfboard wiring paradigm additionally creates a enjoyable construction. Tony’s specific gadget options an insulated deal with/stand, permitting to to take a seat on its backside edge and show characters at a snug angle.

PIC16F15344 code is obtainable on GitHub should you’d wish to assemble your individual, and you may have to arrange an exterior SPI controller to inform it what to show. On the similar time, this Nixie tube and/or stacked perfboard idea could possibly be modified in numerous methods. Maybe one may use a special microcontroller onboard, and even implement the I2C protocol as a substitute of SPI as advantageous.