A Network Attached VFD Tube Clock

-

The elegance of Power over Ethernet (PoE) is that you can provide network connectivity and power over a single cable. Unfortunately not nearly enough hardware seems to support this capability, forcing intrepid hackers to take matters into their own hands. The latest in this line of single-cable creations is this beautiful Vacuum Fluorescent Display (VFD) clock from [Glen Akins].

Testing the VFD tube socket

One of the key advantages VFDs have over their Nixie precessessors is greatly reduced energy consumption, and after [Glen] ran the numbers, he saw that a display using six VFD tubes could easily be powered with standard PoE hardware. With this information, he started designing the PCB around the early 1990s era IV-12 tube, which has the advantage of being socketed so he could easily remove them later if necessary.

[Glen] first had to create a schematic and PCB footprint for the IV-12 tube that he could import into Eagle, which he was kind enough to share should anyone else be working with these particular tubes down the line. After a test of the newly designed socket was successful, he moved onto the rest of the electronics.

The clock is powered by a Microchip PIC18F67J60, which connects to the Ethernet network and pulls the current time down from NTP. After seeing so many clocks use an ESP to connect to the Internet over WiFi, there’s something refreshing about seeing a wired version. The tube segments are driven by a HV5812, also Microchip branded. Lastly, [Glen] used a number of DC/DC converters to generate the 1.5 V, 3.3 V, 5 V, and 25 V necessary to drive all the electronics and VFDs.

We absolutely love the simplicity of this clock, from its sleek aluminum enclosure to that single RJ45 jack on the back. But if you’re looking for something with a bit more flash, [Glen] also put together some PoE Christmas lights over the holidays which share a number of design elements with this project.

[Thanks to Irish for the tip.]

https://ift.tt/2tCyH7U

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Takeaways from the outcry over Dior’s Johnny Depp perfume ad: Tuesday Wake-Up Call

-
Welcome to Ad Age’s Wake-Up Call, our daily roundup of advertising, marketing, media and digital news. You can sign up to get an audio version of this briefing on your Alexa device. Dior pulls a perfume ad starring Johnny Depp Yet another luxury brand just had to backtrack after a culturally insensitive move. Dior on Friday pulled an ad for its “Sauvage” perfume, as Business of Fashion reports ; the spot starred Johnny Depp playing guitar in the desert while a Native American dancer, Canku One Star, performed in traditional dress. The company portrayed the spot as “an authentic journey deep into the Native American soul.” But the brand was quickly accused of cultural appropriation. Critics seemed most troubled by the juxtaposition of Native American imagery with the word "Sauvage"—which means “wild” in French, but which also evokes the history of labeling indigenous groups as “savages.”  LVMH-owned Parfums Christian Dior had apparently tried to proceed cautiously....
Read more

When the coronavirus infodemic strikes

-
Image
Social media sites are stepping up their efforts in the war against misinformation… specifically, the coronavirus/COVID-19 infodemic . There’s a seemingly endless stream of potentially dangerous misinformation flying around online related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and that could have fatal results. It’s boomtown in fake-news land riding high on the wave of people being left with their tech devices 24/7. I myself regularly see everything posted online from “hand gel is an immunizer” (nope) and “children can’t be affected” (not true) to “UK rules mean domestic abuse survivors have to stay with their abusive spouse” (absolutely not true at all and hugely dangerous to claim).  We even have engineers being spat on thanks to 5G conspiracy theories potentially resulting in transmission of coronavirus . Turns out a global pandemic is a lightning rod for pushing people to conspiracy theories galore, to the extent that some folks have to go hunting for guides to wean their family membe...
Read more

Patch, Or Your Solid State Drives Roll Over And Die

-
Image
Expiration dates for computer drives? That’s what a line of HP solid-state drives are facing as the variable for their uptime counter is running out. When it does, the drive “expires” and, well, no more data storage for you! There are a series of stages in the evolution of a software developer as they master their art, and one of those stages comes in understanding that while they may have a handle on the abstracted world presented by their development environment they perhaps haven’t considered the moments in which the real computer that lives behind it intrudes. Think of the first time you saw an SQL injection attack on a website, for example, or the moment you realised that a variable type is linked to the physical constraints of the number of memory locations it has reserved for it. So people who write software surround themselves with an armoury of things they watch out for as they code, and thus endeavour to produce software less likely to break. Firmly in that arena is the size...
Read more