Hp Nixie Tube Electronic counters ideas

[primegaps]

So I've been able to grab a few of these, 5 actually. I have had a freakish fascination with nixie stuff ever since i first saw it, so this was somewhat of a holy grail find for me. I have never actually owned any other nixie tube stuff, although I have a small collection of new and used nixie tubes.

I have always really really wanted a nixie multi meter, or volt meter at least.

Do you guys have any ideas as to what I could do with these 5 devices? I would be open to the idea of opening these up, although i would like to save at least one, just to look at the numbers chooch.

I have some electronics experience from 5 years of engineering school, but I have not ever messed around with these type of high voltage electronics. I would like to have a go at restoring one, even though they seem to work fine.

What would you do? I would love to learn how to mess around with these higher voltage electronics.

Thanks!

[bd139]

They've only got one HT line, about 170v. It's enough to wake you up but not kill you (disclaimer: you might be unlucky). No capacitors to hold that voltage usually either so they are quite safe to work on. Usually all you need to do is clean, clean and clean. Service manual will contain all the info you need on testing and calibration.

Restoration is a good plan for these. They are lovely bits of kit. I'd like one myself but they don't appear this side of the pond that often if ever.

I'm sure someone will say to build a clock or something and you probably can do that non-destructively by just hooking into the gate and count lines in the device with a microcontroller or something.

[dzarren]

What is a HT line? I will restore a few of these then. Two of them work flawless, and the other three have at least 1 somewhat busted tube. I have enough tubes to do something interesting, the clock project seems cool, and I have a few arduinos i have been wanting to use as well.

[bd139]

High tension. There’s a voltage applied to the Nixie tubes around the 170V mark. It’s enough to wake you up unpleasantly if you touch it

The rest of it is all low voltage.