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introNixie Tube Music Visualizer
A hypnotizing music visualizer inspired by those little bars in the top
of iTunes. Fourteen Russian IN-13 Nixie bargraph tubes are used as the display.
The length that each nixie tube lights up represents the volume of a certain frequency in the music, 7 different bands for both the left and right channels.
I designed and built this over a month my junior year in high school. This instructable will go over my design process and the construction, hopefully aiding anyone who wants to build one of their own.
The length that each nixie tube lights up represents the volume of a certain frequency in the music, 7 different bands for both the left and right channels.
I designed and built this over a month my junior year in high school. This instructable will go over my design process and the construction, hopefully aiding anyone who wants to build one of their own.
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step 1Design Process
The goal is to make an interesting display that would show the volume
levels of various frequency bands in an audio signal, as in many music
players and on the front of some hi-fi audio equipment. There are three
major points the project would focus on:
- Minimizing cost: In the process of designing the visualizer, I found this simple VU meter with a nixie display utilizing an exotic IC to convert an audio signal into a volume level. While convenient, it's manufactured by a small company, and each piece would cost over $5 (for me, nearly $80 in those alone!) For simplicity and for my wallet, this only uses simple, cheap, and mass-produced parts. Also because of cost, I decided that 10K ohm resistors would be used for just about everything, so I could buy a few hundred for around $3.
- Analog only: Using a digital signal processor was a possibility, but programming a DSP is fairly difficult, and the cost of DACs for the input and ADCs to drive the output began to raise the price too far. So only analog parts such as op-amps and comparators would be used.
- Adjustability: After Nixie IN-13 tubes were chosen as the display, I realized that the only documentation was in Russian (or poorly translated English) and not very informative. Not knowing anything at all about how much it took to light it up any specific length (aside from less than 4 milliamps), everything about this design would be adjustable.
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I have been looking for exactly this for a different project i am working, my only problem is that i need a variable voltage between 0 and 5 volts instead of your 12v current system. Can anybody here help me in acheiving this. Its a bit over my head, so i would really appreciate some help.
14x 100uF electrolytic polarized capacitor 25v
14x 4.7uF electrolytic polarized capacitor 25v
18x 1uF capacitor 25v
Are the below capacitors multilayer ceramic, ormica? Would ceramic suffice (I didn't see polarity noted for any of them)?
13x .1uF capacitor (should this be 14?)
8x .01uF capacitor
4x 1000pF capacitor
Thank you for writing and shareing this project. :)
Around 1977, Popular Electronics published plans for a miniature real-time-analyzer that used a matrix of LEDs for the display, complete with a PC board layout. It was probably the kit form of an RTA sold by Gold Line. (An updated version is the model ASA10B, http://www.gold-line.com/asa10b.htm ) Anyway, if you can find a copy of that article and etch the board, that would take care of the bandpass filters.
Another option: I'm pretty sure that Rohm made a real-time display chip with something like 5 bands, intended for consumer products. If you can't buy the chip anymore, maybe salvage one (or an equivalent) from a yard sale stereo receiver or car booster. (For example, a Realistic 12-1956 "80 watt" booster has a built-in LED "spectrum analyzer".)