![]() I remember using instruments in the mid-1970s (when I was working in an electronics factory) that had Nixie tube readouts. Great project, and as I'd expect from you, great video! Four out of six is a win in my book, for someone who has never built a kit with Cold War-era parts. Four of six tubes will cycle through the demo code I'm unsure if that is intentional, and will find out once I upload the code to actually connect to the WiFi and work like a real clock. Yeah, that thing will explode eventually. To people who know how electronics work, I understand that this might be an irrational fear, but you should see my soldering job. So I am constantly afraid it will explode at any moment when it is powered. The hookup guide says it works on a 5V power supply, however the tubes don’t light up with their demo code unless it’s powered by a 9V. It’s not perfect, but I like to think it looks original and I am just happy I was able to build it. I literally did a backflip in celebration (check the bloopers at the end of the video). No surprise – I messed that up the first time and didn’t make it large enough to fit the tubes, so it was back to the machine shop for more dremeling and filing, and finally everything fit together. I got some help from a few other employees to teach me how to dremel out a rectangle in the metal base of the CB Radio Tester. Six were soldered, but one is a little crooked and it will forever annoy me. If you choose to build one, I’d recommend getting some extra hands to hold them in place to solder. I am not the most patient individual, so this process was more of a learning experience for me than anything in the build. I spent so much time meticulously placing each wire from each tube in to solder with tweezers. This process made me want to throw it at a wall because the wires were never long enough to comfortably attach each tube. Next was soldering the actual nixie tubes to the board. I put a few resistors in the wrong place, but luckily Feldi caught that before I powered it up, so I learned the excruciating process of desoldering resistors and fixed the problem. A lot of this project was blindly following along with the hookup guide, with poorly lit pictures, and just hoping things would work out. I am SparkFun’s video producer, so I have no engineering experience and this was really the first board I had ever soldered. ![]() In the video, you can see that I ran into more than one problem.
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