Nixie Driver Board
Hardware Revision A
May 2011
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Overview
The Cogwheel Circuitworks Nixie Driver is a compact circuit board designed to drive a wide variety of gas-discharge display tubes in an 8 anode, 16 cathode multiplexed arrangement. Ample I/O options are provided for including on-board buttons, USB device, as well as wireless. High-voltage is generated by a hardware PWM under total software control. Precision time-keeping is provided by a battery-backed, temperature-controlled crystal oscillator. An Atmel ATmega 328 processor utilizes the same software development tools as the popular Arduino series. The entire hardware design, along with a complete clock/display source code are available under an attribution/open-derivative license.
Features
- High-voltage generation up to 250V
- 24 channels of Supertexhigh voltage push-pull drivers (8 high side, 16 low side). Can drive:
- Up 128 individual neon lights
- Up to 8 regular nixie tubes
- Large, multi-element nixie tubes such as B7971s
- Powered by 12-24 VDC @ 300ma max
- ATmega 328P processor with standard AVR ISP programming socket
- FTDI FT232R USB Interface 100% comptable with Arduino boot loader
- Maxim DS1302 real-time clock and Maxim DS32khz battery-backed, temperature compensated crystal oscillator provides time-keeping accuracy to within 8 ppm/yr
- Optional on-board Roving Networks RN-41 Bluetooth Module for wireless operation
- Positions for 8 on-board IN17x7 nixie tubes
Applications
- Nixie tube clocks
- Numerical read-outs
- Information Displays
- Discrete neon dot-matrix displays
Block Diagram
High-Voltage Pin Out
Other Pin Outs
AVR ISP
The AVR ISP socket is used during manufacture to program the Arduino boot loader. Pin out is compatible with the AVR ISP connector found on Arduino compatible boards such as the Arduino pro
FTDI BASIC
The FTDI Basic connector is used only when the board is not populated with its own FT232R chip. The pin-out is compatible with the Sparkfun FTDI Basic Break out programming dongle.
Physical Layout
See the Downloads page for the dxf file
Schematic and CAD FILES
See the Downloads page for schematic and pcb layout files.