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Lixie- LED alternative to Nixie Tubes



Lixie Clock and E-paper for weather Forecasting


This is a rough sketch of my final project idea, and the important components required for this project.



What is this "LIXIE" thing??

Lixie is an LED alternative to the old but awesome Nixie tubes!

What can LIXIE do?

Lixie is based on WS2812B LEDs, (or "Neopixels" Adafruit calls them) meaning it can display the following in any color:

  1. Date / Time
  2. Temperature / Humidity
  3. Website Views
  4. Youtube Views
  5. Tindie Sales
  6. Or any number in any Arduino Project

Oooh!!! Then what are the "Nixie Tubes"??

NIXIE TUBES! In short, a Nixie tube is a little illuminator/signal tube that looks a lot like a vacuum tube but is actually a cold cathode discharge device with either digits in it or symbols.



So, How do you make it?

Lixie tubes can be made by the following process:


  1. Laser Cutting and Engraving:

    2. Acrylic sheets (clear and the black one will be cut using laser.The numbers from 0 to 9 will also be laser engraved on the acrylic sheets.

  2. PCB Making:

    3. The beauty of LIXIE lies in WS2812B LEDs, which are RGB LEDs. Each LIXIE requires arounf 20 of these. It will be designed on a single layer PCB.

  3. 3D Prinitng:

    4. The enclosure of LIXIE clock will be designed by 3D prinitng a round rectangular case.

  4. Networking and Communication:

    5. Since, I want to interface an E-paper display also for showing messages, I will do it by using ATmega324 (Used in Arduino board)

The figure below shows the internal structure of a LIXIE design:

Check out this video to see the working of Lixie tubes and get an idea of what additional features one can add to make it more catchy.


More Updates coming soon!!

In week 03, we needed to design our final project using 2D and 3D softwares.

I used follofwing softwares:

  1. Adobe Photoshop for Raster Designing:
  2. Inkscape for Vector Designing
  3. Sketchup for non-parametric 3D modelling
  4. Solidworks for parametric 3D modelling

In week 3, we were required to design our final project idea and make its raster, vector , 2D and 3D , so for now I have made the following designs:

This is the photoshop model of Lixie Clock


This is the Inkscape model of a single Lixie Tube


This is the Sketchup 3D model of my Lixie based clock


I have taken help from Connor Nishijima , who make and sell Lixie commercially.

Further updates Coming soon!

My Final Project covers following Modules :

  1. 3D Scanning and Printing
  2. Laser Cutting
  3. Electronics Production
  4. Input Devices
  5. Output Devices
  6. Embedded Programming
  7. Networking and Communication