Nixie Watch

Not sure what it is about Nixie Clocks and Watches but I think they are great. Must be something about finding a complex way do perform something simple. You can buy a cheap watch for a dollar at the store that will keep accurate time and might have all sorts of extra functions but what is the fun in that? This isn’t the first Nixie project posted here and it won’t be the last. 🙂

“And this is how it looks when I’m wearing it, and want to see the time. A simple flick of the wrist let’s me know first the hour, then the minutes. It may sound like it would be hard to tell time seeing only two digits at once, but after a few tries it becomes automatic. Most parts are surface mount, and it uses a PIC microcontroller. High voltage is developed by the power converter chip in the foreground, along with the square metal cased transformer shown in the picture above. The two glass cylinders on the left of this side of the board are the reed switches which are used to set the watch with a magnet. This watch is one of the first three prototypes built in the summer of 2002. It uses a CR-2 camera battery, which I have to change on average twice a year.”

Via: Make