I found the first Nixie-Tube clock that I built from a kit so awesome, however the only problem was that it got requisitioned for the living room! So of course I had to order another one for my office.

Again, Pete from PVElectronics did a great job on getting the clock kit to me, and assembly went smoothly. Towards the final stages of the build, there is a step that tests all the tubes, the micro-controller and the high voltage generator with a test pattern that counts up from 0 to 9 and then cycles over. It was at this step that I ran into a weird issue where all of the tubes would display all digits when they should have been displaying 4 or 8. I finally isolated the problem to a single tube (although why it would affect all tubes was unclear at this point):

After Pete and I scratched our heads for a few days, we finally came to the conclusion that it must be some sort of internal short in the actual tube (weird!). He promptly mailed me a new tube + circuit mounting board and I was back in business and finished the clock:

And the color cycling:

And here are a few build pictures I took along the way:

And some shots of the questionable tube:

And the test/debugging setup that I put together.  Here (and I’ve said this before) I’m using two of the test points on the board. I have soldered in two single-pin sockets so I can easily attach a breadboard/other test components to the live board:

And the case being assembled: