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Driving the Tubes (with SPI)!

A project log for IV-16 NumiClock

I love vintage display technologies and building clocks so naturally the IV-16 Numitrons are perfect!

sjm4306sjm4306 09/06/2020 at 21:010 Comments

To start off, thanks to the video sponsor: JLCPCB for sponsoring this project. JLCPCB Prototype for $2 (Any Color): https://jlcpcb.com


My IV-16 Numitron Tubes took a little while to arrive from Europe but now that they are here I've designed a little board to hold them along with the circuity necessary to drive them. All tubes are driven unmultiplexed with each having their own 74HC595 serial shift register so all six tubes can be controlled with only 4 pins (one of them being a pwm brightness control). In this video we take a look at the display boards I just received fresh from JLCPCB, assembly them, program some test code to drive the tubes with a simple counter demo, and look at the final display board running. In the next video we will design, assemble, program and test the additional vertical colon boards as well as the main bluetooth clock board. Stay tuned to see the final clock!

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