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I know I got them months and months ago, but I’ve only just had time to actually do anything besides work. While I do have a big project coming up (but not really at the point where I can write about it), I did finally make the PCB for the nixie power supply I designed a while back.

While I did realise I’d forgotten to put in a 56k resistor when I designed the circuit, I was able to add this in with a through-the-hole resistor I had lying around that was just the right size.

I powered up the circuit with a 9V battery and held my breath as the voltage reading on the multimeter jumped to 246! A quick turn of the pot on the back and the voltage hit 170V, ideal for the nixies.

I connected one up and lo and behold, it lit up! The glow really is ethereal – cameras cannot capture this, you have to see it in person. That didn’t stop me from trying, though!

The next step is to make a PCB to control all 12 nixies (probably with three of the power supply modules) and maybe link it into an RTC (though that is a bit boring – I might try doing something else, like GPS position?).

Schematic – Board (the board isn’t great, with some pretty fine tracks that run pretty close to each other, but it does have the 56k resistor I forgot in my version) (both files under CC-BY-SA-NC).