Important Notice:
Due to the increasing price of the IV-18 tube and lower stock around the world, these tubes are more and more difficult to acquire. Therefore the price of the kit will have to increase to compensate this extra cost. And it will likely keep increasing in the future. Eventually this sale will terminate whenever the tube stock is exhausted. So buy it now and lock in the low price.
Up for sale is one set of IV-18 VFD Ice Tube clock kit with upgraded MCU: ATmega328p-pu. So the memory is increased from 16KB (atmega168v) to 32KB (atmega328p).
It was originally designed by Adafruit.
This is a KIT. The buyer will have to solder the parts together. Please follow the tutorial on Adafruit.com STEP BY STEP.
https://learn.adafruit.com/ice-tube-clock-kit/board-assembly
CAUTION:
1) While you assemble the kit, you may experience various problems. If you are not certain you can solve the problems by yourself, we suggest you to buy a fully assembled clock instead.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/181985003307
We have assembled tens of clocks using the exact same parts you are receiving, and have never had any problems. So the quality of the parts are guaranteed. Due to the nature of the kit, we CANNOT refund you if your assembled clock does not work.
Please do not buy if you are not comfortable with this.
2) The GPS option is turned ON by default. If you want to add your GPS module to the clock, you have to do it all by yourself. We CANNOT help you with this.
The parts are brand new. The IV18 tube you receive may look slightly different from the picture shown here, as different batches may vary in colors.
The item includes a FULL set to build the clock, including:
The firmware being used is the one by John Archie, the so-called "XMAS-ICETUBE". More information can be found in his github.
https://github.com/johngarchie/xmas-icetube
There are a lot of improvements of this firmware over the Adafruit one. Please see the feature list below (which is adopted from John's readme file)
##############
## FEATURES ##
##############
The xmas-icetube firmware offers the following improvements over
the official Adafruit firmware:
- GPS synchronized timekeeping*
- fully automatic compensation for clock drift
- animated display transitions
- multiple time and date formats
- DST support (USA, EU, or manual)
- pulsing display brightness during alarm and snooze
- three alarm times for selectable days of the week
- functional alarm during power outage**
- finely adjustable alarm volume (from 0 to 10)
- progressive alarm option (gradually increasing volume)
- adjustable snooze duration
- selectable alarm sound (high frequency beeps, low frequency beeps,
high frequency three beep pulse, low frequency three beep pulse,
Merry Christmas, Big Ben, Reveille, or For He's a Jolly Good Fellow)
- 4-fold improvement in battery life
- no beeping or time loss after external power failure
- low battery warning before battery failure
- per-digit brightness adjustment for uneven displays
- optionally disable display during specified time periods
* An external GPS module, such as the Adafruit Ultimate GPS, is
necessary to support GPS synchronized timekeeping. (Not included in this sale)
** Without external power, the alarm sounds with loud high frequency
beeps. The only way to turn the alarm on or off is with the alarm
switch. Snooze is not supported.
The following additional features are supported on the xmas-icetube
hardware revision, but the Adafruit Ice Tube Clock v1.1 can be
modified to support any or all of the following as well:
- automatic brightness control by ambient light
- optionally disable display at night (when dark)
- 25-fold improvement in battery life
- highly accurate temperature compensated timekeeping
- IV-18 tube driven to specifications (providing more even
display illumination and preventing cathode poisoning)
For more details on how to USE the clock, please see the link below:
https://github.com/johngarchie/xmas-icetube/blob/master/firmware/USAGE
Paypal only.
The PCB color is blue.
USPS Priority Shipping to lower 48 US states.
US buyers ONLY.
Any questions, please feel free to ask before buy. Thank you.
The return is only accepted if the kit is not used in any way (including but not limited to soldering, modification, etc.). Otherwise, the return is not accepted. Thanks.