Trochotron Industries

I had a brief chance to play with some nixie tubes, specifically the nixie duo and driver kits from ogi lumen.  The tubes themselves are beautiful and retro, and the ogi lumen driver and mounting boards provide a nice compact mounting for the display, which can be extended by simply plugging in more modules.  The boards require some sort of external controller for the display; ogi lumen provides sample code for the Arduino.  I hacked up some code to control the tubes using the Teensy USB development board, modifying the Teensy USB serial example to allow sending digits to the nixie tubes via a simulated USB serial port.   This worked suprisingly well; the Teensy solution  is a bit more compact and integrated than an equivalent solution using an Arduino board.  (Slightly cheaper as well.)  Here’s the photo goodness: