Your work in Hollow State Electronics, is nothing less than a national treasure. Persons outside of the electronics, radio and television restoration, and audiophile hobbies, have only begun to recognize the value of tube moderated equipment, and the value of not losing the capability to produce the spares necessary to maintain that equipment.
I used to have a Nixie tube readout that was separate from the radio. A friend made one and I bought it. When I moved from San Francisco to London I sold it to a radio listener there. My friend who had made it was miffed that I hadn't offered it back to him but I had lost touch. It was a fine display. This is a great project and you're a genius.
I just wanted to say that I found your channel in suggested videos about 4 months ago . You are very talented and you explain everything so I can understand . Thank you !
I doff my cap to you. (English saying). Not only do you command control of the tube world but you are creative in the digital arena too. Utterly amazing. A light to me, which I hope to follow. Respectfully yours, Gerald Magill - B.Eng in Electrical Engineering (Hons).
Great project, Ron! I love all your videos, but I really enjoy these project walk throughs (The electronic circuit breaker is another great one). Hope to see more like this in the future!
GREAT TO SEE THAT YOUR UP AND BUSY AGAIN RON,, CANT WAIT TO WATCH YOUR NEW FILM FROM START TO FINISH , BRILLIANT AS ALWAYS. FROM IPSWICH,, SUFFOLK,, UK.
For the last few months it's just been a nerd crush but this just upped the game. I can't wait to apply this to my sx-99. I'm in San Antonio and would love to come visit sometime.
I wish I had just one tenth of your considerable knowledge Ron, your videos are truly amazing. Please keep them coming. By the way, the cat topped off the video just nicely there ;)
Thanks for sharing your vast knowledge of just about everything it would seem. Love your videos, love your clothes and love your cat, it's about as helpful as mine!
As usual you amaze me over and over, ty for your work. Please glue a simple cooking timer to the camera, when you begin to record set the timer. You obviously know how much time you dispose with your cam memory. Because this awesome restore is worth at least 2x1h of video. Ty, greetings.
Some have used an NE2 neon bulb for the "1" digit. You could have set up one of the Arduinos 16 bit counters to directly count the input frequency by feeding the local osc into the counters clock. A second timer would still generate an interrupt when it would be time to read the count value of the 16 bit counter. The interrupt would also set a flag so your loop function would know it's time to update the display. This might allow the arduino counter to directly count without a pre-scaler.
Really great stuff here Ron, you’re range of understanding and explanation of ancient and current electronics is pretty amazing. I’ve picked up so much just watching your videos, thank you so much for taking the time to produce them. Buddy Ron, is there any way you could show a bit more video of the finished radio operating? The little but at the end just doesn’t do your wonderful creation justice!
Yes, PLEASE! More video of the radio in operation. i need motivation to even think about tackling something like this. Also, what mix of the three gases did you use? Or are you not giving away your secrets? lol
@Robert Housedorf II Now I might be wrong but I was thinking he just used Neon but was saying that he had different gasses in the manifold. This was a new one on me, Ron is really something. I’d never think in a million years about building a tube like that. He is simply amazing!
This is a good reason why I decided to build Mr Carlsons Ultra sensitive capacitor tester and the SIFT (Self Initiating Foil Tester). An ohm meter, even a high voltage capacitor tester can give a false reading. Also, what Paul actually said was that the banded end of the capacitor should be connected to the lowest impedance point. For instance, a coupling from plate to grid. The plate would be the lower impedance and the grid would be the high impedance and is more susceptible to pickup stray 60 Hz hum and/or other extraneous RF emissions. That said the band end is not necessarily only for grounding. But like you said Ron, one can probably get away with it but it is just good practice. I still have great admiration of your skill sets. I love old radios, (and cats) the older the better.
I have used "good practice" in my work when I was employed and "had to" have impeccable work. But as a VERY experienced person I have found that good practice in many cases is only extra fluff that hinders productivity. Sometimes I get bitten, most of the time not! :)
glasslinger I'm interested in where you went to school for the things you do such as glass blowing and electrical work. I would love to get into glass blowing and neon sign making as well as nixie tube making and other such related things. Love your work!
Ron what a talented man you are.Wood working, electronics, vacuum tube making etc...Is there anything you can't do? I'm sure you're making your own dress too.
Great job, thank you for sharing this comprehensive video about the way you proceeded. Is there any place where the code is available so as to help following the steps while you explain ?
hi i have been recently watching i am greatly impressed with your ability and knowledge in the day you would have been invaluable now you teach newbies
Hello Ron. I really enjoy your video, particularly the skill you have at building custom vacuum tubes. I have been meaning to write this earlier, but for various reasons I have not been able to. In one of your previous videos you mentioned that the compact fluorescent tubes in your workshop, I think you said, generated a lot of electrical noise along with some light. Well I have pulled some of these apart and interestingly each contain four lengths of dumet which I bet you could use for feed through material in place of tungsten. The bit wrapped around the circuit pin is possible not the best, but the straight length between that and the tube is without bends or kinks. From what I can tell, from broken tubes, there are no joins in the wire. Also have you tried using gas mig wire for the same? This too is copper coated steel. I would experiment with these but I do not have the equipment to do so.
Hi Ron. You know what would be neat... Making a Nixie tube display in purple or violet. With your equipment, do you think you could safely open and refill a good Nixie tube to change it's color?
I am no glass expert but i think the glass used for most of the nixies are soda glass or lead glass. and needs a a lot of stuff to even work with. Ron i think uses pyrex due to easy of use and needs little preheating ect. Alex.
I have tried this already, using epoxy to seal a fill stem onto the brittle soda glass. I was not able to get any decent colors. Light blue and pink-violet were the only colors other than the neon orange. The firing voltage of the tubes became horrible, over 400 volts. Ordinary 151 drivers won't switch that so it takes lots of transistors!
Nice work, Ron! Excellent use of a 'Duino :D Have you ever considered using your arduino to program a bare microcontroller chip? You can get them for a couple bucks, which is WAY cheaper than a whole Arduino board, plus then you have the Arduino still available for other projects :D It's easy to do if you have a solderless breadboard and some jumper wires, then you can add a 16MHz crystal and a couple of load capacitors for it, and you have a fully working Arduino-on-a-chip :D
Hi! I just stumbled on your channel when this video showed up in my recommendations and this stuff is great!! Just one question about using logic ICs to do the subtraction. Maybe this is mentioned in the video or comments but I can't find it. Why not set the presets to (in this case) 1000 - 455 = 545 and then just count upwards? This will subtract the difference and no more need for counting down and complicated timing. A regular crystal clock would do the job just fine, or is there something I missed? Using a UNO is cool too! :-)
Great project, Ron. Just a quick tip: using integer arithmetic, you don’t need to do those subtractions before the divisions to get each digit. Saves a few cycles, eh?
Yes, I know. There were a few more tricks that could shorten the code even more. I put in the "obvious" so the newbies could easily follow the logic of the code. Make it too obtuse and people's eyes glaze over and they give up on it.
glasslinger - good point. Your code would work without modification even if someone did accidentally use floating point math, I guess. Defensive coding... lol.
Hey, have you considered building a vacuum fluorescent display tube? As I understand it, it's basically a cold-cathode triode with a fluorescent coating on the anode (?). Alternately, I think you can use a direct heat cathode.
Ron, I watch all of your videos and all of Mr. Carlson's videos too, so I _think_ that I can understand both of your points of views about things like worrying about whether the "shielded" sides of caps need to be installed towards the "most grounded" side of a circuit. Paul appears to try to _maximize_ every little bit of performance, life-time, etc., in his builds/restorations, while you are being _practical_ by only worrying about where the "shield" side of caps are when it makes a discernible difference, I think. Am I correct or am I missing something here? When you removed the "little bit of roughness" from the box, were you "whiskering" the wood surface? I.e., removing the raised fibers left by the stripping process? While I'm thinking of it after seeing you build the neon tube, do you build all of your own tubes when you don't have one in stock (other than when you recreate an old tube to see if you can)? I'm looking forward to your next video!
Great videos, you have an amazing amount of talent. Please keep them coming. Has you cat every jumped on your bench when the power is on and gotten zapped?
![Electronic Circuitry Diagnosis And Fault Finding! [Repair]](/img/n.gif)
Great video, can't be many people who have mastered both glass blowing and Arduino coding.
Ron is a genius he can do anything
The master at work - we are not worthy! Keep them coming Ron
Wonderful! I've virtually given up watching tv since discovering videos like this
Your custom builds never cease to amaze me. Master of lost arts, no doubt. I'm awfully darn glad you started making videos again!
This is a real time spanner, 1940s radio, 1960s Nixie tubes, 1980s driver ICs, 2010s microprocessor, and classic glass work.
Jesus Ron, either you're speeding up with age, or I'm slowing down. Another great video, thanks so much.
Whether the date of the technologies used, from 1900 to date, nothing stops you. You are my mentor.
I’ve never seen anyone make a nixie display radio before, so this was a great video and the overall aesthetic of the build was awesome!
Your work in Hollow State Electronics, is nothing less than a national treasure. Persons outside of the electronics, radio and television restoration, and audiophile hobbies, have only begun to recognize the value of tube moderated equipment, and the value of not losing the capability to produce the spares necessary to maintain that equipment.
Wow, impressive skills in every area of expertise required for a creation like this.
I used to have a Nixie tube readout that was separate from the radio. A friend made one and I bought it. When I moved from San Francisco to London I sold it to a radio listener there. My friend who had made it was miffed that I hadn't offered it back to him but I had lost touch. It was a fine display. This is a great project and you're a genius.
You are doing magic. Refers to Mr. Carlson make me smile.
Every once in a while someone comes along and just does things that are magic... you are that person....
What a Span of Knowledge, You pleasantly Surprise me every time. Big Thumbs Up..
Love love love this channel !
You definitely RULE, Ron ! ! ! Love your videos! So well done and so informative. Always anxious to see more. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE your channel ! ! !
Was just looking yesterday to see if i missed an upload. Love your craft and the work you do. Please keep these great videos coming!
One of the most impressive videos I've seen for a long time. Fascinating!
Seen many of your radio restoring and tube making video's.I like this project especially. The concept speaks to me and you show your various skills.
I just wanted to say that I found your channel in suggested videos about 4 months ago . You are very talented and you explain everything so I can understand . Thank you !
AA5 tubes, nixies, IC's, transistor, microcontroller, hand made glow tube and decades of experience all in one 1940's radio. Amazing job !!!
Dude, super freaking awesome !
Great project. Love your attention to detail. Thanks!
Great video! Thanks so much for filming it.
I'm very happy when new video !! This is a wonderful project! Show more your supervisor he is very gorgeous.
You are a wizzard! I look foreward to every time you put up a video! Thak you, Ron! You make my day!!
I doff my cap to you. (English saying). Not only do you command control of the tube world but you are creative in the digital arena too. Utterly amazing. A light to me, which I hope to follow. Respectfully yours, Gerald Magill - B.Eng in Electrical Engineering (Hons).
Great project, Ron! I love all your videos, but I really enjoy these project walk throughs (The electronic circuit breaker is another great one). Hope to see more like this in the future!
Ron's best video to date.
Ron, Thanks for another great video!
Absolutely amazing, never seen a radio mod like this before. Kudos !
HELL YES! YOUR BACK!!!!!!
I HAVE NOT SEEN YOU IN A YEAR, I HAVE MISSED YOUR VIDEOS!
GREAT TO SEE THAT YOUR UP AND BUSY AGAIN RON,, CANT WAIT TO WATCH YOUR NEW FILM FROM START TO FINISH , BRILLIANT AS ALWAYS. FROM IPSWICH,, SUFFOLK,, UK.
We desperately need a run through of how you made your spot welding pinch electrodes! I can't find it on your channel.
YES!
On his website he explain the details: tubecrafter.com/tubecrafter_020.htm
tubecrafter.com/tubecrafter_014.htm
Awesome work Ron!
I always enjoy yer vids.... even if it takes a year or two of waiting.
For the last few months it's just been a nerd crush but this just upped the game. I can't wait to apply this to my sx-99. I'm in San Antonio and would love to come visit sometime.
I've been wanting to do this since I've been restoring old radios. Now I know how, and now I need to find myself an old radio with a transformer.
1940 technology with 2000 digital technology and engineering skills on this radio. Glasslinger you are 1 great genius!!!!
Ron, you remind me of Dr. Wizzard from the fifties! Love the Nixie Tube setup. Great tutorial!
Yet another amazing project
Glad to see you back on.
Oh wow! that radio looks so nice. Awesome work!
Great to see a new video !
i feel so tiny ... what a video. From arduino code lesson to create tube and restoring housing. Man U are spectacular !
I wish I had just one tenth of your considerable knowledge Ron, your videos are truly amazing. Please keep them coming. By the way, the cat topped off the video just nicely there ;)
What a beautiful job on that oldie radio...….Walt in Miami
Great, as always your the best,,,thanks,,Ron
Thanks for sharing your vast knowledge of just about everything it would seem.
Love your videos, love your clothes and love your cat, it's about as helpful as mine!
Simply incredible ! Fun you mention mr Carlson. Hes incredible too. I watch his channel too
too many skill, amazing work, thank for show to us.
I had the same Idea years ago, but never made one. Good job!
Excellent. Very interesting and educational. Thanks 😀
Very few tell the whole story. Thanks for sharing the video and many greetings. George
Wow... genius at work! This is the coolest channel ever.
As usual you amaze me over and over, ty for your work.
Please glue a simple cooking timer to the camera, when you begin to record set the timer.
You obviously know how much time you dispose with your cam memory.
Because this awesome restore is worth at least 2x1h of video.
Ty, greetings.
Some have used an NE2 neon bulb for the "1" digit.
You could have set up one of the Arduinos 16 bit counters to directly count the input frequency by feeding the local osc into the counters clock. A second timer would still generate an interrupt when it would be time to read the count value of the 16 bit counter. The interrupt would also set a flag so your loop function would know it's time to update the display. This might allow the arduino counter to directly count without a pre-scaler.
Really great stuff here Ron, you’re range of understanding and explanation of ancient and current electronics is pretty amazing. I’ve picked up so much just watching your videos, thank you so much for taking the time to produce them. Buddy
Ron, is there any way you could show a bit more video of the finished radio operating? The little but at the end just doesn’t do your wonderful creation justice!
Yes, PLEASE! More video of the radio in operation. i need motivation to even think about tackling something like this.
Also, what mix of the three gases did you use? Or are you not giving away your secrets? lol
@Robert Housedorf II Now I might be wrong but I was thinking he just used Neon but was saying that he had different gasses in the manifold. This was a new one on me, Ron is really something. I’d never think in a million years about building a tube like that. He is simply amazing!
I watch a lot of radio videos, and this is a WOW! Kitty buddy at 1:29!
great video the ending cut off before seeing it working,would be cool to see a neon light radio.......
This is a good reason why I decided to build Mr Carlsons Ultra sensitive capacitor tester and the SIFT (Self Initiating Foil Tester). An ohm meter, even a high voltage capacitor tester can give a false reading. Also, what Paul actually said was that the banded end of the capacitor should be connected to the lowest impedance point. For instance, a coupling from plate to grid. The plate would be the lower impedance and the grid would be the high impedance and is more susceptible to pickup stray 60 Hz hum and/or other extraneous RF emissions. That said the band end is not necessarily only for grounding. But like you said Ron, one can probably get away with it but it is just good practice. I still have great admiration of your skill sets. I love old radios, (and cats) the older the better.
I have used "good practice" in my work when I was employed and "had to" have impeccable work. But as a VERY experienced person I have found that good practice in many cases is only extra fluff that hinders productivity. Sometimes I get bitten, most of the time not! :)
great build and a cute cat
So impressed.
The Master for sure wonderful video thanks for posting
you have a remarkable talent
Look forward to your next video!
Brilliant video Glassy :)
I had wondered if you could alter a vfd output for a nixie use, I have yet to try
This will be one of its kind radio in the world. Priceless!!!
Thank you professor
Brilliant video Ron well done. I am trying to learn Arduino programming you make it look easy....Berni
Gold hands equal Genius old hands. The work seams so easy but it is not. Happy new year from France.
absolute genius
Old master of radios👍👍👍
A big work realy nice glassinger
Brilliant, just brilliant. you certainly have an incredibly wide skill set. Most entertaining too.
glasslinger I'm interested in where you went to school for the things you do such as glass blowing and electrical work. I would love to get into glass blowing and neon sign making as well as nixie tube making and other such related things. Love your work!
Ron what a talented man you are.Wood working, electronics, vacuum tube making etc...Is there anything you can't do? I'm sure you're making your own dress too.
Great job, thank you for sharing this comprehensive video about the way you proceeded.
Is there any place where the code is available so as to help following the steps while you explain ?
hi i have been recently watching i am greatly impressed with your ability and knowledge in the day you would have been invaluable now you teach newbies
A long one but a good one. Fascinating.
Your "supervisor" is going to insist that you initiate the following protocols: PET and FEED.
Hello Ron. I really enjoy your video, particularly the skill you have at building custom vacuum tubes.
I have been meaning to write this earlier, but for various reasons I have not been able to. In one of your previous videos you mentioned that the compact fluorescent tubes in your workshop, I think you said, generated a lot of electrical noise along with some light. Well I have pulled some of these apart and interestingly each contain four lengths of dumet which I bet you could use for feed through material in place of tungsten. The bit wrapped around the circuit pin is possible not the best, but the straight length between that and the tube is without bends or kinks. From what I can tell, from broken tubes, there are no joins in the wire. Also have you tried using gas mig wire for the same? This too is copper coated steel. I would experiment with these but I do not have the equipment to do so.
Hi Ron. You know what would be neat... Making a Nixie tube display in purple or violet. With your equipment, do you think you could safely open and refill a good Nixie tube to change it's color?
I am no glass expert but i think the glass used for most of the nixies are soda glass or lead glass. and needs a a lot of stuff to even work with. Ron i think uses pyrex due to easy of use and needs little preheating ect.
Alex.
I have tried this already, using epoxy to seal a fill stem onto the brittle soda glass. I was not able to get any decent colors. Light blue and pink-violet were the only colors other than the neon orange. The firing voltage of the tubes became horrible, over 400 volts. Ordinary 151 drivers won't switch that so it takes lots of transistors!
Interesting
Nice work, Ron! Excellent use of a 'Duino :D
Have you ever considered using your arduino to program a bare microcontroller chip? You can get them for a couple bucks, which is WAY cheaper than a whole Arduino board, plus then you have the Arduino still available for other projects :D
It's easy to do if you have a solderless breadboard and some jumper wires, then you can add a 16MHz crystal and a couple of load capacitors for it, and you have a fully working Arduino-on-a-chip :D
Hi! I just stumbled on your channel when this video showed up in my recommendations and this stuff is great!!
Just one question about using logic ICs to do the subtraction. Maybe this is mentioned in the video or comments but I can't find it. Why not set the presets to (in this case) 1000 - 455 = 545 and then just count upwards? This will subtract the difference and no more need for counting down and complicated timing. A regular crystal clock would do the job just fine, or is there something I missed? Using a UNO is cool too! :-)
Thank you so much. Please keep them coming.
Tube making - Can one use Fine Mesh Copper Screening for things like grids or the plate
Fantastic video, I love nixie tubes but they scare the shit out of me.
Great project, Ron. Just a quick tip: using integer arithmetic, you don’t need to do those subtractions before the divisions to get each digit. Saves a few cycles, eh?
Yes, I know. There were a few more tricks that could shorten the code even more. I put in the "obvious" so the newbies could easily follow the logic of the code. Make it too obtuse and people's eyes glaze over and they give up on it.
glasslinger - good point. Your code would work without modification even if someone did accidentally use floating point math, I guess. Defensive coding... lol.
Hey Ron hope your ok not seen a new video for a while
You are a MASTER!!!!
good job. thanks for sharing:)
Haha your hand in the thumbnail is situated such that I thought you might be running for the mayor of Gotham and enjoy raw fish.!
It'd be cool just to see 3-5 minutes of it operating.
Hey, have you considered building a vacuum fluorescent display tube? As I understand it, it's basically a cold-cathode triode with a fluorescent coating on the anode (?). Alternately, I think you can use a direct heat cathode.
Ron,
I watch all of your videos and all of Mr. Carlson's videos too, so I _think_ that I can understand both of your points of views about things like worrying about whether the "shielded" sides of caps need to be installed towards the "most grounded" side of a circuit. Paul appears to try to _maximize_ every little bit of performance, life-time, etc., in his builds/restorations, while you are being _practical_ by only worrying about where the "shield" side of caps are when it makes a discernible difference, I think. Am I correct or am I missing something here?
When you removed the "little bit of roughness" from the box, were you "whiskering" the wood surface? I.e., removing the raised fibers left by the stripping process?
While I'm thinking of it after seeing you build the neon tube, do you build all of your own tubes when you don't have one in stock (other than when you recreate an old tube to see if you can)?
I'm looking forward to your next video!
Wonderful. Wish I could find anything withixie tubes.
Great videos, you have an amazing amount of talent. Please keep them coming. Has you cat every jumped on your bench when the power is on and gotten zapped?