You May Have a Nixie Tube Clock, but Can Yours Levitate?

nixie tubes, electromagnets, levitation, and microcontrollers, this project has “Hackaday” written all over it!

Time Flies: Levitating Nixie Clock comes from [Tony Adams], and uses a lot of technology we’ve seen before, but in a new and interesting way. A nixie tube clock is nothing new, but using electromagnets to levitate it above a base certainly paired with inductive coupling to transmit power using no wires make this floating nixie build a real treat.

In order to achieve this feat, [Tony] used coils to wireless transmit power from the base to the floating platform that the tubes are mounted to. That alone is a pretty cool idea that would have drawn our attention, but he goes one step further and transmits the time and settings signal wirelessly from the base to the levitating clock as well. That is accomplished with an IR transmitter on the base sending a signal to an IR receiver on the clock.

It’s a pretty ingenious solution, and it’s no surprise that we’ve seen [Tony’s] work before. Back in 2012, we featured another of his projects that uses a lot of the same techniques: a nixie tube chess set. With top-notch craftsmanship and clever ideas like this, we’re definitely looking forward to seeing what else he can come up with!

The project is has about three weeks left in it’s campaign and is still a bit more than half-way from the goal.

Filed under: clock hacks, Crowd Funding