Software

06-29-2010

New software release 1.00.11.

Fixed bug in pendulum Mode 0 which would only light some of the quarter hour lights on after a razzle. The lights are now forced on.

06-09-2010

New software release 1.00.10.

Modified the code to write the clock's sense of the time out to the rtc before each razzle (auto or otherwise). This compensates for the inaccuracy of the crystal on the RTC board.

05-29-2010

New software release 1.00.09.

Restricted the minimum time that sync time can be set to 60 seconds. Times less than that can make it hard to comunicate with the clock.

02-25-2010

New software release 1.00.08.

Modified to detect and use the RTC on power up if it's present.

Modified to detect AC or DC power and generate 60hz if DC power is detected. (This only works for 14.7456MHZ crystals).

Reduced the help messages as well as other strings to make room for the above changes.

01-17-2010

New software release 1.00.07.

Modified to have pendulum mode 0 set the lamps always on.

Modified to have the sync time to always occure at the top of the interval (an interval of 3600 will be the top of the hour)

11-02-2009

New software release 1.00.06. Modified code to calculate the current time directly from the zero crossings without converting to milliseconds first to eliminate the rounding errors that were occurring.

10-24-2009

New software release 1.00.05. The code was modified to allow advancing the minutes and hours by clicking the buttons as well as just holding them down.

The software for NixieNeon is released under the Free Software Foundations GPL license. This license lets you use it, as you please, change it as you need and distribute it as you want as long as you offer the same deal to those you distribute the software too. In otherwords, if you choose to modify and or distribute this code, YOU MUST make the source code available or let folks know where they can get it from.

At the core of the code for the NixieNeon is the boot loader and library from the Arduino project which can be found at the web site http://www.arduino.cc. Being the hacker I am, I took great liberty to meld what I found of their's into what I needed.

The code for NixieNeon can be found on the sister site of NixieNeon ftp://ftp.Linuxlots.com/pub/nixieneon.

To update or modify the code on the NixieNeon, you only need the development tools abnd drivers for the FTDI usb serial port board. Some version of both of these can be found on the ftp site along with the NixieNeon code linked to above.

If you want to check on the latest versions of either they can be found here at the FTDI site http://www.ftdichip.com/ and the AvrLib site http://www.nongnu.org/avr-libc/ and for the Windows users out there WinAvr at http://sourceforge.net/projects/winavr/

Once the tools are in place, building and downloading the code to the processor is as easy as typing in make and resetting the processor at the proper tme.