BOSTON -- LEDs and other display devices are all very nice, but there's something unique about Nixie Tubes that is guaranteed to capture the attention of most any engineer and make more than a few of them "Oooh" and "Ahhh"!
At next week's DESIGN East conference (Sept. 17-20) at Boston’s Hynes Convention Center, the ever-popular Gadget Freak column from Design News will be presenting a live show called “Gadget Freak DIY.”
Gadget Freak DIY is dedicated to presenting do-it-yourself projects to the design community. The presentations on Sept. 19 will provide an opportunity for innovators to describe how devices were conceived and implemented and, most importantly, to show them off to fellow engineers.
Sponsored by Allied Electronics, the Gadget Freak DIY session will kick off at 3 p.m. at the DESIGN East Theater (there will be some giveaways for lucky participants). The presenters each have five minutes to wow the audience with their projects.
This year's collection of do-it-yourself designs includes everything from cyberpunk helmets with LED visor illumination and chromium accents (I want one!) to a cloud-based remote control system that allows the operator to guide a ping pong ball from anywhere in the world.
The project that really has us jazzed is the Nixie Tube Clock, created by John Day and Sean Cappy of Microchip. The project’s design and implementation provides so much instructional value that Day and Cappy have been invited to give an in-depth presentation at 1 p.m. on Sept. 19.
Behold, Nixie Tubes!