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Nixie Tube Display Power Solution Brings Retro Charm to Any Project

June 11, 2025

MIKROE’s Nixie Power Click add-on board and Nixie shield deliver the “retro” look for visually striking and nostalgic projects.

Lee Goldberg

Related To:

Electronic Design

The Nixie Power Click, a booster Click board from MIKROE, provides the high voltage needed to power Nixie tube (cold cathode display) shields. This board features the LM2577 step-up voltage regulator, enabling a two-stage boost conversion from 5 to 150 V. It also integrates Microchip’s 16-bit I/O expander MCP23017 for precise control via the I2C interface and ADDR SEL jumpers for easy I2C address configuration.

Nixie Power Clicks are compatible with MIKROE’s Nixie IN-12B add-on shield boards. The shield boards feature pre-installed IN-12B Nixie tubes with a character height of 18 mm and the ability to display digits 0 to 9 with a left-positioned decimal point. Operation has a typical starting voltage of 150 V with 3-mA current per segment, which is delivered by the Nixie Power Clicks.

A new member of the MIKROE’s 1750-strong mikroBUS-enabled Click board family of compact add-on boards, Nixie Power Click can be used on any host system supporting the mikroBUS standard. It comes with the mikroSDK open-source libraries, offering lots of flexibility for evaluation and customization. Nixie Power Clicks, like all recently released Clicks, features ClickID, which enables a host system to seamlessly and automatically detect and identify this particular board.

About the Author

Lee Goldberg | Contributing Editor

Lee Goldberg is a self-identified “Recovering Engineer,” Maker/Hacker, Green-Tech Maven, Aviator, Gadfly, and Geek Dad. He spent the first 18 years of his career helping design microprocessors, embedded systems, renewable energy applications, and the occasional interplanetary spacecraft. After trading his ‘scope and soldering iron for a keyboard and a second career as a tech journalist, he’s spent the next two decades at several print and online engineering publications.

Lee’s current focus is power electronics, especially the technologies involved with energy efficiency, energy management, and renewable energy. This dovetails with his coverage of sustainable technologies and various environmental and social issues within the engineering community that he began in 1996. Lee also covers 3D printers, open-source hardware, and other Maker/Hacker technologies.

Lee holds a BSEE in Electrical Engineering from Thomas Edison College, and participated in a colloquium on technology, society, and the environment at Goddard College’s Institute for Social Ecology. His book, “Green Electronics/Green Bottom Line - A Commonsense Guide To Environmentally Responsible Engineering and Management,” was published by Newnes Press.

Lee, his wife Catherine, and his daughter Anwyn currently reside in the outskirts of Princeton N.J., where they masquerade as a typical suburban family.

Lee also writes the regular PowerBites series.