btc-ticker-esp8266 VS arduino-nixie

For future me - If you're looking for a quick, real time, working 8266 + max7219 display. https://github.com/nebman/btc-ticker-esp8266

I also wanted to be able to tweak the code running on my clocks, and ended up with several clocks from RLB Designs, for which I wrote my own software. The most nixie-specific part of the code (which I imagine is shared in principle with most other kits) loops over the digits to display them one at a time (or two at a time in RLB's case) in a technique called multiplexing, which simplifies the hardware requirements. You usually just write updated display values into a buffer whenever you have them, and the loop keeps the multiplexing scheme going (it is the only part of my code that uses delays, which I would like to get rid of).

Indeed, it's the inversion part I need to figure out. I've seen some displays with two coils for each vane, one for each direction, so it's just a matter of applying that transitory power to one or the other; but with just one, some kind of H-bridge is required, and really the challenge is how best to implement that with a reduced component count via multiplexing (e.g. driving one digit or one vane at a time). I maintain an Arduino clock program that already supports various display types – just need to find the time to figure it out and add support for these too!