RPiNixieClock

This github repo contains the software code for a Raspberry pi powered Nixie Clock. This software was written to power the 6 digit IN-12 Nixie Tube Clock based on a Raspberry Pi Zero W, but can easily be ported to cater other configurations of Nixie tubes and RPi models. The schematics, board layout and BOM files for the accompanying hardware can be found in the following repo: https://github.com/midasgossye/NixieClockHardware/

Would you love to have a nixie clock at home that you can reprogram yourselves? You can buy one of my homebuilt nixie clocks with IN-12A tubes fully assembled, working and preloaded with this software from tindie: link

Getting Started

These instructions will get you a copy of the project up and running on your particular Raspberry Pi:

Prerequisites

Before you begin, make sure you have a Raspberry Pi up and running with the latest version of Raspbian (available for download here: https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/). The software works on both the Lite and full Desktop versions.

Run an update and upgrade routine to make sure you have all of the latest packages installed:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

Because the hardware uses almost all of the GPIO pins of the RPi, including ones normally reserved for serial, I2C & SPI communication, it is necessary to disable these interfaces using the raspi-config menu:

sudo raspi-config

Go to submenu 5: Interfacing options, and disable the following interfaces:

SPI
I2C
Serial
1-Wire

In order to access the GPIO pins of the RPi, the program uses the RPi.GPIO module. Make sure you have the latest version installed:

sudo apt install python-rpi.gpio

Next, make sure you have pip installed:

sudo apt install python-pip

Use pip to install the requests module:

pip install requests

Finally, make sure you have git installed:

sudo apt install git

Installing

The installation process is very straightforward, start by cloning the github repo:

git clone https://github.com/midasgossye/NixieClock.git

Navigate to the NixieClock directory:

cd NixieClock

Run the clock.py program:

python clock.py

And if everything went well, you should have a functioning Nixie Clock!

Usage

Set time-zone

If the clock displays the wrong time, you probably haven't adjusted the time-zone setting yet in the raspi-config menu. Go to raspi-config menu:

sudo raspi-config

Select option 4: localisation options

Next, select I2: Change TimeZone

Follow the wizard to change the timezone.

Set-up weather API

In order to get the weather API functionality to work, you first need to register an account at openweathermap. After you have signed up for a free account, you will recieve an API-key that needs to be inserted into the clock_w_temp.py program. You can also change the weather location by typing in your closest city name.

weather_location = 'Ghent'                              # Set weather location (city)
weather_api_key = 'PUT YOUR OWN API KEY HERE'           # OpenWeather API key

Authors

• Midas Gossye - Github
• Joshua Spaander - Github

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License

Acknowledgments

• This project was inspired by and partly based on the New Precise Nixie Clock from the May 2016 issue of Elektor Magazine (link)
• IoT connectivity inspired by EEVBlog Nixie Tube Display Project (link)