Wednesday, December 12, 2018

KBFI -> KVUO - Portland OR

I took off from Boeing Field this afternoon in an elderly Cessna 150M, N7991U. My plan is to travel up and down the West coast. San Diego would be a stretch goal. Los Angeles would awesome as well.

Today I planned on stopping in Hillsboro and continuing to Eugene, but weather was uncooperative.

Headwinds were quite strong; I often measured just 59 knots across the ground. I had to temporarily divert to Kelso to refuel when HIO showed IFR conditions. I made it to VUO (Pearson Field, Vancouver WA, just north of Portland) to stay for the night.






Wednesday, July 11, 2018

Nixie Tube Clock

My brother bought me some nixie tubes for my birthday a while back. They sat in my desk drawer for a long time, until I finally got around to building this clock.

The nixie tubes are driven by four SN74141 IC's and a 180v power supply, hanging off the back:


I control it with an Arduino and a DS1307 RTC module, keeping battery backup. The button on the side can adjust minutes or hours with short or long presses.



This was the first time using 3D printing in a custom electronics project. I sketched the model using Blender. The PCB's slide into their respective sleds, and a front gate locks the main PCB in place. The enclosure is designed to be replaceable.



Soldering this beast took a few weeks. I'm going to try printing my own PCB next time.





I resurrected my old Printrbot Simple from five years ago. With a ton of tweaking and calibration, I was able to print the rear sled and bracket, but it was unable to finish the full 10cm base.
So, I finished the base and front gate using an Ultimaker from work. What a beaut


Code and enclosure model: https://github.com/dylanrush/nixieclock
Help from:
https://idyl.io/arduino/how-to/control-a-nixie-tube-with-arduino/
https://www.dfrobot.com/wiki/index.php/Real_Time_Clock_Module_(DS1307)_V1.1_(SKU:DFR0151)