What is it?

Serial Nixie Driver is a board roughly the size of a IN-12 soviet era nixie tube that can be driven using a serial interface, hence the name.

The serial interface itself is compatible with hardware SPI, but software bit-banging can also be used.

The boards can be daisy-chained to create nixie tube chains of any size.

How does it work?

At the heart of the driver lies two shift registers providing the serial to parallel interface. Each pin controls a high voltage transistor that is able to fully drive each nixie cathode without having to resort to voltage clamps.

The shift registers belong to the "High Speed CMOS" logic family, which means Serial Nixie Driver is compatible with both 3.3 and 5V logic; at up to 25Mhz.

How to use it?

An Arduino library can be obtained from Github.

This will allow you to quickly get started with your tube and with very little code.

For instance: driver.send(7); will display a 7 on a single tube. In the case of a daisy chain of tubes you can simply send an array or each number individually!

Advanced users can write their own code or have a look at the library's source code to see how it works.

Physical Dimensions

The board measures 35x40mm (1.38x1.57"). Additionally, M2.5 mounting screw holes are located on each corner of the board, 3.2mm (0.126") from the side.

What do you get?

• A complete Serial Nixie Driver PCB with all SMD components already soldered in.
• 12 gold plated pins for the tube.
• Male and Female PCB headers.

In option, you can add an IN-12 "New Old Stock" Nixie Tube. These tubes are brand new and all originate from the same box/same date code, ensuring the tubes match each other.

Through hole headers and pins are not soldered.

High Voltage power considerations

The driver requires a 170 to 180V high voltage DC source. A 20K anode resistor is used on each nixie tube. As a result, the tubes will run at 1mA with 170V and 1.5mA with 180V.

If you need one, you can get a high voltage DC power supply here.