My early experiences with electronics was at the very end of the tube era. Five & Dime stores still sold replacement vacuum tubes for television sets and radios. Did anyone actually buy them, though? Not sure. Apple II and Commodore computers were already commonplace. Tubes still fascinated me, and in the past several years I became introduced to Nixie tubes. In particular, driving Nixie tubes through modern software.

My ultimate goal is to build a Raspberry Pi driven Nixie tube clock. I’ve actually completed almost all of the work. The most difficult part for me was finding a suitable base that would be both functionally and aesthetically appropriate, which I finally found. It all just needs to be assembled now.

Here’s a video of my Raspberry Pi Zero driving a single Nixie tube through a small piece of Python code: [link].