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Comment by at_a_remove | Hacker News Reader

I have seen a few alternatives, but are there any nixie replacements which have the features of a nixie (elegantly-shaped lettering, warm glow, solid stroke as opposed to dots) without the voltage issues and rarity? Lixie seems to have stopped producing, etc.

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I guess it sounds like you're looking for an alternative technology? but in case you haven't seen them, these folks make them - https://www.daliborfarny.com/

They have a very interesting project of a clock custom built for NASA to calibrate high speed cameras. Apparently these tubes can switch 100,000 times a second and their lack of any flicker makes them well suited to this purpose: https://www.daliborfarny.com/project/calibration-display-for...

I've worked with vacuum tubes a bit in audio amplifiers, but this seems wild, honestly. Does anyone know how Nixie tubes can manage such a feat? 100,000 times a second? It's incredible.

That is interesting, but a numeric LED display only flickers if you choose to use PWM drivers. LEDs might have met NASA's 1/1000th of a second requirement in a simpler way than nixie tubes. Not as nifty for sure.

I don't know how fast they can switch on and off though, for the purposes of something like the above. Don't particularly trust the internet on this one because switching speed isn't really the diode part (which would be very fast), but rather the emitted light...which I assume lags a bit at "off".

Dalibor has a YouTube channel where he publishes super interesting videos about the production and R&D processes. Highly recommend.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0IY1BQiMehWMvezqWLyk4g

I was just looking at these this AM. They are $$$$ but so beautiful.

Someone tried edge lit acrylic: https://hackaday.io/project/165079-lixie-ii-the-newnixie-for...

What appears to be a commercialized version: https://www.banggood.com/Geekcreit-Pseudo-Glow-Tube-Clock-DI...

I would love to try stacked EL components; I'm pretty sure you can make them fairly transparent, and manganese doped zinc-sulfide should make roughly the correct color?

Still requires high (compared to electronic components) voltage

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