Multiplexing Nixies

[Dave McGuire]

On Mar 6, 2007, at 7:49 PM, Tom Peters wrote:
> My great treasure is a box of Burroughs 7971 nixies. I have five,  
> or maybe six of them. As you may know, these are "British Flag"  
> displays that can do any number, letter, and some punctuation.  
> They're 4.55 inches high, excluding the pins, and the characters  
> are 2.5 inches high.

   Those are gorgeous tubes.

> The other thing I want is a WWV decoder so it sets itself. Yes, I  
> know I could periodically set it over a USB port, but I want it to  
> be self sufficient if no PC is handy. The only suggestions I've  
> gotten so far are to cut up a cheapo atomic clock from a big-box  
> store and salvage the 1 PPS output from it. That might help me keep  
> it accurate, but won't help me set it automagically.

   You could obtain (or construct) a small, dumb WWVB receiver (like  
one of the ones in the cheapo clocks) and pipe it into this  
gentleman's design:

   http://www.geocities.com/hagtronics/wwvb.html

   He describes a (trivial) PIC-based design, and provides schematics  
and source code.

          -Dave

-- 
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL