Lixie 2.0: A disappointing revision
For LIXIE II - The #NewNixie for Arduino! (Digit Kit)
I was a big fan of the original lixie design. A sleek, modern, compacted look. I bought 6 of them to start and was immediately a big fan (despite issues with the structural integrity of the part). This new lixie 2.0 has left me less than pleased. They instead made the pcb and overall lixie part structure bulkier and added a thicker period/dot as an extra acrylic panel. Never truly understood the point of this. If I wanted a customizable panel, I could've just replaced one of the digits with my own printed design. Also, while the hot-swappable acrylic panels were nice in theory, they fail in practice. They look misaligned every time they are on the stand which lends itself to a less uniform look. Lixie 2.0 is definitely more difficult to prototype with and use. On top of it all, they seemed to pretty much END production of the original design. I wanted to buy a couple more Lixie 1.0's but they apparently are no longer making them and just dropped support for it all without any warning.
And don't get me even started on the documentation available. The Github repo's for Lixie 2.0 hasn't been updated in months and emailing the Lixie Lab team will often yield little to no response. Honestly, with the price of building a 6+ digit display which goes up to $200+ in parts and the lackluster support I get from the team, it's just not worth it. Next time I work on/try to build a LED Nixie display, I will not be turning to Lixie Labs to purchase a kit. I'd probably be better off designing my own or buying the other acrylic display kits that exist on the market.
