The Nixie Clock made without Nixie Tubes

Everyone enjoys Nixie tubes. (Prove us wrong). However they're expensive, increasingly difficult to source (usually coming from Ukraine or a really big, soul-less country), and require a high-voltage power supply which can be unfriendly for beginners. 

Taking that into account, Instructables user built their own rendition of tubes by making segments consisting of 1206 SMD LEDs, each aligned between a vertical copper wire. These were then slotted into a custom PCB to create what is, in our opinion, the most realistic non-Nixie tubes we've ever seen. 

The clock is driven by an Arduino-compatible circuit with the popular DS3231 real-time clock IC keeping the clock accurate and easy to set. Check out the most informative video about his clock below:

Building the wire frames for the LED segments involved creating templates with a 3D printer, with the wood base machined using a CNC device. Overall, an outstanding clock and you should visit the Instructables page to learn more. 

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