Steins;Gate Nixie Clock
I’m a huge fan of Steins;Gate and desperately wanted to own a divergence meter. In Steins;Gate, the protagonist is capable of altering the past to create alternate timelines. Since these timelines can sometimes be imperceptibly different to other timelines, the divergence meter allows the protagonist to know which timeline they’re on. The Divergence meter displays the current timeline as a number less than ten to six decimal places. These numbers are displayed on nixie tubes which are mounted on some prototyping board.
Divergence Meter
Nixie tubes are quite expensive. They were popular pre-digital electronics but have since stopped production. So to make my own divergence meter, I had to make my own nixie-like display. I came across this video and this article from hackaday which showed a nixie-like display made with acrylic sheets edge-lit with RGB LEDs.
So I attempted to replicate their build with my own laser cutter. My build was notably less robust than theirs, with acrylic sheets mounted further away from each other and a tendency for the display to wobble. But I’m fairly pleased with how it turned out.
My build features 8 digits and is capable of showing the time, date and the current timeline shown as a random number between 0 and 2.
