Nicholas Booth Dot Com

This is a novel electronic thermometer with a linear display looking just like a real glass thermometer, but based on nixie tube technology dating back to the sixties and seventies. It came from here: http://www.nixiekits.eu/NixieTherm.htm.

I spent an afternoon building this kit whilst S&G were out on Saturday. Overall I think it was a great success and a fine kit with good instructions. Started by laying out the various packages from the box and inspecting the bits and pieces.

Accompanied by a pretty good set of instructions I then proceeded to mount all the PCB components, sticking to the recommended order which made pretty reasonable sense (resistors, capacitors…. and so on). All the components fitted just fine – no “fine tuning” required. The PCB is through plated, and although some of the pads were small, with a suitable iron posed no issues. I used a very fine lead solder which worked well. [Not yet experienced lead free solder so I don’t know how much more difficult it might be, although having read around the subject a bit I don’t expect it’s as bad as I imagine.] Once all the parts were mounted there were a number of test voltage measurements to make and a crude calibration was completed.
The next stage was to burn-in the display tube. These Russian made components have been sitting in a warehouse for probably over twenty years. The result is that the linear display doesn’t light up all the way along the tube at first use. This is fixed by running the tube for an hour or so at a slightly higher than normal current. There are some pads to jumper on the PCB to set this up, and after then removing the op-amp the burn-in commenced. After about an hour and a quarter I couldn’t detect any improvement in the display’s range so that task was done.

So after the burn-in was completed the next steps are to remove the burn-in jumpers and commence mechanical construction. The thermometer is housed in a neat case made of laser-cut perspex sections, and the display tube itself is supported in a cut-out section of perspex so as to resemble a conventional glass/mercury thermometer.

The first stage was to mount the vertical section for the display tube, upside-down, in a vice (or in my case, a large G-clamp to simulate a vice). Slide the tube into the cut-out with a couple of perspex supports, and then you continue to build the case from the top down. Some care required to make sure the bits will end the right way up and facing forward. All the mechanicals were in the kit – nuts, bolts, washers, spacers etc – and this was a fairly straightforward set of steps to work on. The final result when removed from the supporting “vice” was very pleasant.

The Nixietherm was left running overnight before re-calibration in the morning and a subsequent trimming later in the day so as to end up with a good looking and effective desk thermometer.

• Completd the Nixie-Therm last night, soak tested and calibrated and so now on display. Sits nicely on the piano. http://yfrog.com/ki8qlbbj #
• The NixieTherm PCB is completed http://yfrog.com/kk4qcdj and the ancient Russian display is now burning-in http://yfrog.com/kekgvnaj #
• Made this http://yfrog.com/kkevnccj at http://www.muchhadhamforge.co.uk/the-forge-experience What a brilliant day. #
• i am a blacksmith today #
• Beam me up, Ducky #replaceawordinafamousquotewithduck #
• RT @LucasBlack: Please take a look at my picture at http://ow.ly/5xEjC Prestige isn't just shiny posh stuff! < Lovely motor & happy fellow. #
• RT @TheArduinoGuy: Just dropped my iPad on my bare toe. It bloody hurt. << But is the iPad OK? #
• Third ginger beer batch now bottled. Hoping this variation will taste better than the previous two batches! #
• Another lovely evening to watch the juniors practice their cricket. Girls getting ready for Surrey tournament next w/end. #

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• Ginger beer extremely lively but tastes very poor. Second batch also somewhat bland. Time to review the recpie. #
• RT @roverparts: A great read! http://fb.me/154htv6iy <- especially for Landrover fans #
• Long problem with important web site now cleared. Off home. #
• Pizza on the way: Dealing with major web problem for a key US based site of ours. #
• Have finally ordered the roof rack for the Landrover. #
• Very pleasant here in Newdigate watching the juniors practicing their cricket. Just met an old buddy. #

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• Seriously competitive parents #
• Someone has seen me – messages flying in otrher channels. #
• At Epsom CC with Grace for a cricket tournament. Good and sunny weather. #
• First batch of Ginger Beer in almost 40 years now bottled and finishing off in the shed. Waiting for explosions. #
• New ALtEPG disk in TiVo been running 24 hours or so. All OK. Love the hacks now available inc. incoming phone call number from Asterisk PBX. #

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Grace and I have taken the time to make a new Ginger Beer plant – harking back to my own youth when we made ginger beer almost every week at home. The technique was introduced to me by my Grandmother who furnished me with a “kit” which I recall came in a stone bottle of some sort and consisted of ground ginger and some instructions. I can’t remember whether we obtained the yeast elsewhere although I do have a memory of smelly blocks of soft gooey stuff so we probably got that from the baker in Dene Street (sadly long gone, now).

The receipe we used this time was something of a guess at what was needed: the plant itself (and there are those who would disagree that this was a genuine real symbiotic ginger beer plant – they’re probably right) was stared using a teaspoon of dried yeast (the type we use in the bread machine), a teaspoonfull of ground ginger and a teaspoon of sugar all mixed with about a pint of like warm water and placed in a covered, but not sealed jar. Each day Grace added another teaspoon each of ground ginger and sugar. This went on for seven days until last night when I completed the first bottling.

Bottling consisted of: dissolving eight ounces of sugar in hot water, adding the jiuce of one lemon and making the quantity up to about 6 pints. The ginger beer plant itself was poured into this via a sieve and cloth strainer. It took a few minutes to get through the cloth as the solids quickly clogged things up. After that, the fluid was put into pint bottles and capped with crown caps (which I had for my conventional beer making).

The solids from the straining process were returned to the jar, a pint of fresh water added and the plant restarted ready for next week’s bottling.

The seven bottles of new ginger beer are now maturing in the shed in a large plastic bucket withe a cardboard cover. This is specifically to protect, to some extent, from the risk of explosion that the bottles pose as the small amounts of yeast still supended in the solution go to work on the new sugar and carbonate the beer (alchohol is a side product). I have vivid memories of bottles spraying all over the kitchen at home on one occasion.

Two weeks to wait – then I’ll test and report!

• Dunsfold. Landrovers as far as you can see #
• Today's blog spam topics seem to favour "Pomegranite Volume Pills", Network Admin Salaries, Flash Web Sites and football jerseys (again)! #

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• Building a new ZoneMinder installation for the observation of a Peregrine Falcon #

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• Takes me back more years than I care to remember, and it works better this way too! Doom on the Web http://t.co/yu6OHDT via @mozhacks WOW! #

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• Discovered that a baddie somewhere has been hijacking an Asterisk PBX that I look after. Fixing. #
• Answered door to a pair of Jehova's Witnesses – with a kitchen knife in my hand, by chance. They did not stay around long. #
• No bread in the house, so it has to be baked beans on croissant for supper tonight. #
• Where have all my Tweets gone – all six hundred seem to have vanished. #

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• RT @RogerHighfield: Register to win a piece of the Red Planet worth around a thousand quid http://bit.ly/lV3zoK < at @newscientist magazine #
• Rozzer with speed gun near Fourwents pond this morning #
• Very soggy after having to stand in the rain outside Holborn tube before deciding to catch a to Waterloo. #
• On the train to London to see my colleagues at @newscientist #

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