Speaking of everything old being new - how about Nixie tubes?

As I mentioned yesterday, there’s a lot of old stuff being dredged up and put into new contexts in our current day and age. Nixie tubes are one of those that have long held my interest. I’ve been very tempted in the past by some build-your-own kits, but have never sprung for it. Perhaps this Nixler will get me to take the leap.

You can think of the Nixie tube as the proto-LED. LEDs are in so many things today, and before what we have now, we of course had 8-segment LCD setups. Well, the nixie tube puts a very retro-futuristic bent on that.

Here, in the Nixler, this retro-futurism lands directly in the space age. You’ve got a polished white enclosure to hold all the electronics, with an aluminum kickstand coming off of it that looks like it came from Cupertino. As an added bonus – that I really enjoy – the board has RGB backlighting built in as well, so you get that extra dose of color.

There’s a whole host of functions (see those below) and it’s got an interface so you could reprogram it as you like. Coming in at $200 this is not an inexpensive kit, but it’s one the most polished-looking ones I’ve seen in some time. The project itself is over 600% funded, and closes out on March 29, 2020, with delivery anticipated for May 2020. campaign page