[Mod] Nixie Tubes [nixie_tubes][git]

[VanessaE]

Here's a simple mod to add some old-fashioned filament displays to your world

There are four types of display devices: the old-fashioned Nixie tube, which uses a generic/common design and displays the digits 0-9 (plus colon and period in this design), a Decatron tube similar to ETL/Baird Atomic GC10B, which displays its value by lighting up batches of "pins" on its face, an "alphanumeric" Nixie-like tube using a 14+1 segment display similar to the Burroughs B-7971 tube, and a Numitron design similar RCA DR-2115 (but using a 7+2 segment display with period and colon).

Place one, right-click it to set a channel, hook up some Digilines wires and a Lua Controller or so, and send the symbol you want it to display as a Digilines message. Decatron tubes can also be wall-mounted. A stripe indicates the "1" position on those.

The classic Nixies and the Numitrons respond to the numbers 0-9 and the words "colon", "period", and "off", while the alphanumeric Nixies will respond to the entire ASCII character set (32-127), the above three control words, plus "del", "allon", and "cursor".

Decatron tubes respond to 0-9 and "off" to directly set their states, "inc" and "dec" to bump the value up or down, "get" to read the current value back into your LuaController program, and they'll send "carry" or "borrow" as a message if the count overflows or underflows.

See the README for more details.

These tubes emit a small amount of light when displaying something.

Since these are meant to be driven by Digilines signals, only the "off" ones for all four types appear in the Creative Inventory. Use /giveme to get the others if you're not using Digilines (this is how the two middle Nixie screenshots were created). Node names are of the form "nixie_tubes:tube_{0..9, 'colon', 'period'}" for classic ones, "nixie_tubes:alnum_{ASCII char code}" for the alphanumeric ones, or "nixie_tubes:decatron_{0..9}" for the Decatrons.

No crafting recipes have been made for the Decatron yet.

Depends: Default minetest_game stuff, a recent Minetest engine, mesecons, and digilines

License: LGPL for the code, WTFPL for textures, models, and whatever else.

Download: https://github.com/VanessaE/nixie_tubes ... master.zip
...or browse the code: https://github.com/VanessaE/nixie_tubes

Crafting

+ "Show recipes..."

Classic tubes take 5 glass, one wall sign, and one mese crystal fragment. Yields 4.

Alphanumeric tubes use the same recipe, but with a whole mese crystal instead of the fragment. Yields 4.

Screenshots:

+ "Show images..."

These Decatrons are showing a combined count of 4128.

Numitron screenshot by cheapie

Example Lua Controller code:

+ "Show it..."

This snippet of code is what runs on the LuaC in the first screenshot above:

Your phone or window isn't wide enough to display the code box. If it's a phone, try rotating it to landscape mode.

Code: Select all

if (event.type == "on" and event.pin.name == "A") then
    print("pin A")
    digiline_send("1", "6")
end

if (event.type == "on" and event.pin.name == "D") then
    print("pin D")
    digiline_send("1", "colon")
end

if (event.type == "on" and event.pin.name == "C") then
    print("pin C")
    digiline_send("1", "off")
end

And a variation of this code runs in the single LuaC that's controlling the four Decatrons:

Your phone or window isn't wide enough to display the code box. If it's a phone, try rotating it to landscape mode.

Code: Select all

if (event.type == "program" or event.type == "interrupt") then
    interrupt(0.2)
    digiline_send("tube0", "inc")
end

if (event.type == "digiline" and event.msg == "carry") then
    if (event.channel == "tube0") then
        digiline_send("tube1", "inc")
    elseif (event.channel == "tube1") then
        digiline_send("tube2", "inc")
    elseif (event.channel == "tube2") then
        digiline_send("tube3", "inc")
    end
end

(each tube in the associated screenshot is on channels "tube0" through "tube3", from right to left)

[Krock]

Interesting, I have never seen this digit-display method before.
How about a dash "-" sign?

[VanessaE]

I could add other symbols easily enough, but a "-" isn't especially common with Nixie tubes (though there are some designs that only display symbols like % or °C or so, but not numbers). I wanted to keep these more or less the same as the real things, which generally only have a dozen or so numbers and symbols to pick from.

[VanessaE]

Update: I've added a set of alphanumeric tubes to the mod, in the form of a 14+1 segment display (similar to Burroughs B-7971, with the same wire layout). It has full ASCII support, and also responds to a few control words (see the README).

[cheapie]

Here's a clock using it, based on the Mesecons Laboratory clock. It expects a digilines RTC on channel "clock", a blinky plant on any pin, and nixie tubes on channels "tenhour", "hour", "colon", "tenminute", "minute", and "ampm", in that order. "ampm" should be alphanumeric, the others plain numeric.

+ Luacontroller Code

Your phone or window isn't wide enough to display the code box. If it's a phone, try rotating it to landscape mode.

Code: Select all

if event.type == "on" or event.type=="off" then
  digiline_send("clock", "GET")
end
if event.channel == "clock" then
  time = event.msg * 24
  hour = math.floor(time)
  ampm = hour > 11
  hour = hour % 12
  if hour==0 then hour=12 end
  tenhour, hour = math.floor(hour / 10), hour % 10
  time = (time % 1) * 60
  minute = math.floor(time)
  tenminute, minute = math.floor(minute / 10), minute % 10
  if (tenhour==0) then digiline_send("tenhour","off") else digiline_send("tenhour",tenhour) end
  digiline_send("hour",hour)
  digiline_send("colon","colon")
  digiline_send("tenminute",tenminute)
  digiline_send("minute",minute)
  if ampm then digiline_send("ampm","P") else digiline_send("ampm","A") end
end


+ Screenshot

[Dopium]

Nice work kinda cool for making industrial super computers.

[minermoder27]

Oooh, looks awesome! What about adding some form of high-voltage driver that you would need to power them?

[VanessaE]

Think of it as having a digilines-to-HV multiplier/driver magically, invisibly embedded in the black casing at the bottom ;-)

(Really, doing so wouldn't be hard, but I don't really see a use for that)

[Sokomine]

Looks nice! I'm sure a lot of places could be marked with larger "signs" that way.

[Hybrid Dog]

l like it, but that are many nodes, l think. And l think if you use an object, you can modify its texture and don't need to register lots of nodes.

[VanessaE]

Indeed, using an entity for the display would reduce the total number of nodes to just two, but entities suck right now. Too buggy.

[cd2]

wow cool mod!

[VanessaE]

Update: now with Decatron tubes as well. See first post and README for details.

Another update: Better textures for the Decatron tubes' cathodes.

[DDroid]

Not to get off the Nixie Tube Subject here but see this

http://elevation.wikia.com/wiki/File:Super_Rare_Otis_Lexan_Hydraulic_Elevator_at_Fine_Arts_Bldg,_University_of_MO

[12Me21]

how exactly are you supposed to use "get"? I tried


digiline_send("tube0","get")
if event .channel == "tube0" then
digiline_send("nixie0",event.msg)
end

but that overheats the microcontroller somehow...

[cheapie]

how exactly are you supposed to use "get"? I tried


digiline_send("tube0","get")
if event .channel == "tube0" then
digiline_send("nixie0",event.msg)
end

but that overheats the microcontroller somehow...

You're firing off a "get" message on *any* event there, which includes the reply, forming an infinite loop. Make that first line only run on on "on" or "off" type event, and connect a blinky plant to the LuaC.

[VanessaE]

Thanks to a contribution from cheapie, this mod now has Numitron tubes similar to RCA DR-2115.