Truth be told, we all love floating objects. There is just something magical about them. Who wouldn’t love a super-cool clock suspended in mid-air? These clocks are made from Nixie tubes – glass tubes containing cold cathode displays that glow showing a particular number. Magnets are sometimes used to levitate objects.
So here we have a fascinating combination of these two technologies- the awesome levitating nixie clock. The device was built by Tony Adams, a Scottish who is an electronics developer by profession. He recently introduced a nixie tube chest set. His next device is the world’s first and only floating nixie clocks.
The clock set will hover above its base and displays the date and time in digital format with numbers glowing inside glass tubes. The levitation is the result of rare earth magnets present in both the underside of display as well as the base. The electromagnets in the base provide stability to the display above. Although the electromagnet is powered by mains electricity, a battery with a back-up of about 30 hours can be used in case of power outage.
Copper induction coils in both pieces of nixie clock wirelessly powers the nixie tubes. Also located in the base are the actual time-keeping electronics that send signals to the display by infrared communication. The time and date can be set by different ways either through base, or buttons or even by the nixie clock smartphone app.
The Levitating Nixie Clock has a page on Kickstarter where Adams raised more than $50,000. He is offering two variations of the device for now:
- The Relay Model: It has 5 nixie tubes that display the hour and the minutes
- The Beacon: It has one big tube that displays the numbers for hour, minute and second successively
Check out this video for more:
