Nixie Tube Watch
A DIY watch with Nixie tubes from the 1950s
Here's my watch up and running. I planned this out to be a summer project before the start of uni, but it ended up taking over half a year lol.
Objective: Build an analog watch from scratch using cathode ray Nixie tubes from the 1950s.
- Designed printed circuit boards to keep the form factor of the watch as compact as possible.
- Created a Qi standard charging module for the watch to charge wirelessly.
- Built the watch case using resin and CNC-cut glass.
- Programmed the time functions of the watch in C.
Design Process
- It took me around half a year to design the final PCB and gather all the components I needed for the watch.
- Initially, my watch display consisted of a small oled screen, but I quickly scrapped that idea once I found out about Nixie tubes.
- I had minimal soldering and PCB design experience before making my nixie tube watch, so I learned most of these skills on the go.
A bit of the watch's innerworkings. On the left is the watch's PCB with all its parts soldered. In the middle is a schematic of a Nixie tube. On the right is a diagram of how glow discharge works (this is what gives Nixie tubes their amber glow).
Coding
- I coded the time functions in C.
- I coded on the MPLAB IDE since it has built-in MCU support is easy to use.
- MCUs usually take hex files as code (due to memory space) so I converted my code to hex files.
- I used a 16 pin-32 pin DIP adapter to connect my PIC-16 MCU to my computer and upload the code to it.
- I worked with a PICkit 3 to transfer files from my computer to the MCU.
- I worked with a PICkit 3 to transfer files from my computer to the MCU.
- (Ali, 2024) contains addtional Nixie tube documentation and code.
Watch my vid explaining the watch build process and the science behind Nixie tubes!