Fixietube - Fake Nixie Tube displays

Lot's of older projects I designed in Eagle, but I'm not using that anymore. Recently I found some cool jars and wanted to make a new bulb, but had no idea what the correct arrangement of LEDs was. So here are screenshots of the schematics to work with, done on my old computer. 

I've revisited the base board and the LED board today. 

This will be all through hole to sell it as a kit. I know there are smd kits for everything, but this felt more right. Along with a 3D printed socket and one of the jam jars I've recently acquired, this will make one digit.

right now it listens to "setTimer" and I can update the software over the air - nice!

Also the case is quite nice - I even designed a back piece this time :D only thing missing is the 'fence' between the glass and LEDs.

so I had two spare sets of jam jars, boards and LEDs left and started this beauty. Using one of my #Ignore this ESP8266 board for controlling stuff.

Since the the socket fits a 5x5 dirtypcb board perfectly and the cabling job was kind of annoying, I thought of also revisiting the base design. Maybe I'll fit an esp8266 on it as well. Maybe not.

So while I was in Austria for an installation the 3mm diffuse LEDs came in and I had to solder one of the left over boards together. The blue LEDs might need a diffuser as well andI still want them to turn off at night. Actually I could just fix that right now in software.

This project collected some dust for a while, but now with a dedicated spot on my table, I want to give it some thoughts and love, starting with some different LEDs. I've ordered diffuse orange LEDs and I will try them out on a spare board, testing if this will increase the readability. I'm close to putting an ESP8266 in there and play around with the "program over air" code or connect it via serial to my Raspberry PI. I like the thought of working on it without taking it apart to get to a serial/usb thing on there.

I still need those menu buttons and maybe an IR distance sensor to tell if someone stands infront of it. The lights are, although dimmed down, quite bright and I always have to pull the plug over night. Thankfully the RTC module is pretty accurate so far :)

The LEDs also point down, so it makes sense to have the clock high and far away on a shelf somewhere, sadly.