Nixie clock MK2

A nice birthday gift

Some time ago I managed to buy a lot of IN-12 nixie lamps for very cheap. I bought them because I knew that I will probably want to use them again in some future project. When my friend’s birthday was coming up I decided to try to start making more personal gifts. So I decided to make a nixie clock. This project is not perfect. It was a bit rushed because I was racing to make it on time. The transistor footprints were wrong, so I had to make them work by rotating them to make the right legs touch the right solder points. In the beginning I was thinking about making a 3D printed case but because of time constraints I did not manage to. So the clock has this unfinished vibe and the center of mass is close to its face, so it gets tipped over easily. Furthermore, I did not manage to make the RTC work properly. I did come up with a very hacky solution, where everytime the clock is booted up it starts from 16:00, so you need to turn it on at the right time, and it will keep the time itself from that point on. I reused the code for scrambling the nixie tubes from my previous clock. Also, I added some references from stuff my friends likes on the PCB. In the end it turned out alright, and I was happy with the end result. I feel that everytime I overcame a flaw it added a bit more personality to this clock.

The Pictures