
Building a Nixie clock when starting out in electronic engineering is kinda like playing Stairway To Heaven when learning to play the guitar. My first attempt used - like so many other designs - the K155ID1 (the UDSSR version of the 74141) to drive some IN-14 tubes. I used a Raspberry Pi Pico to drive the K155ID1s and a premade 5V -> 170V boost converter. That's it, pretty simple.

Next, I wanted to create something a little 'prettier' and more involved. It uses IN-17s, a stack of three PCBs (designed in KiCAD) and a wooden enclosure (designed in Fusion360).



I also made a slightly larger version, using IN-12 tubes. Both versions regularly get the time from an NTP server, so the time is always correct.

