Dekatron tubes controlled by arduino

Interfacing dekatron tubes with a microcontroller is fairly easy, once you understand how the tubes work. Threeneuron's Pile o'Poo of Obsolete Crap provides the necessary background information and schematics for making this work.

I used two russian OG-4 tubes. I prefer the orange look of the neon tubes rather than the purple look of the argon filled OG-3 tubes. The latter tubes just look to modern for my liking. On the above picture you can see how I have mounted the tubes on a rig alongside two Magic eye tubes.

The schematics is more or less directly from the Threeneurons page. It uses two output pins from the arduino, and one input-pin. My high voltage supply is somewhat unstable, so I used a zener diode to protect the input pin from over voltage.

The above picture show the PCB, soldered Manhattan style. The high voltage power supply is from Ebay, and works best with less than 10V on the input side, but can provide up to 1000V. The current is however in the microampere area, hardly enough to kill a mosquito, and just enough to drive two dekatrons at 450 V. There is also some other outputs on the board providing around 170 and 250 V respectively.

I am going to use the dekatrons as part of the display solution for my homebrew RF transceiver. Now I have the Nixie display, magic eyes and the dekatrons under control (the radio itself is not finished yet). Even my cardboard mock-up is looking great!

The above video show the prototype assembly.

The dekatron code is as simple as this. Notice that the input pin is not used in the below code.

int DekIn1=13;
int DekOut11=12;
int DekOut12=11;
int DekIn2=6;
int DekOut21=5;
int DekOut22=4;

int count=0;

void setup()
{
  pinMode(DekOut11, OUTPUT);      // sets the digital pin as output
  pinMode(DekOut12, OUTPUT);      // sets the digital pin as output
  pinMode(DekOut21, OUTPUT);      // sets the digital pin as output
  pinMode(DekOut22, OUTPUT);      // sets the digital pin as output
}

void loop()
{
  if(count<30)
  {
    digitalWrite(DekOut11, HIGH);
    delay(10);   
    digitalWrite(DekOut21, HIGH);
    delay(50);                 
    digitalWrite(DekOut12, HIGH);   
    digitalWrite(DekOut22, HIGH);
    delay(10);  
    digitalWrite(DekOut11, LOW);  
    digitalWrite(DekOut21, LOW); 
    delay(10);  
    digitalWrite(DekOut12, LOW); 
    digitalWrite(DekOut22, LOW); 
    delay(10);
    count++;
  }
  else if(count>=30 && count < 60)
  {
    digitalWrite(DekOut12, HIGH);
    digitalWrite(DekOut21, HIGH);     
    delay(10);                 
    digitalWrite(DekOut11, HIGH); 
    digitalWrite(DekOut22, HIGH);    
    delay(5);  
    digitalWrite(DekOut12, LOW); 
    digitalWrite(DekOut21, LOW);       
    delay(5);  
    digitalWrite(DekOut11, LOW); 
    digitalWrite(DekOut22, LOW);  
    delay(5);
    count++;
  }
  else
    count=0;
  
  
}

Magic Eye Tube 6e5c

Magic Eye Tubes were used as RF-indicator tubes on radios from the 1930s until the end of the tube era and needle movement meters displaced them.

I love the glow of these tubes and want to use one as a rudimentary S-meter in my homebrew HF-transceiver. I purchased two Soviet 6e5c tubes from Ebay. I think both of them were used. I also bought two VU-meter PCBs from a Hong-Kong Ebay seller.

I could not find a schematic, but drew the circuit diagram based on the PCB on a piece of paper in order to understand the circuit. From my understanding it is a basic buffer audio amplifier followed by a DC coupled stage that rectifies the negative half cycle to provide the negative DC to drive the Magic Eye Tube.

Soldering the PCB was simple and I had all components in my junk box. The tube is mounted in a 8 pin PCB-mounted socket. There seems to be room for a LED beneath the tube. Nice if you want to pimp it up a notch or two. I do not want such modern nonsens in my old-school experiments, so I skipped that.

For the power supply I purchased a high-voltage supply from Ebay. Unfortunately, it does not seem to be able to provide enough current to drive the tube at any higher voltage than 180V, so it is a bit dim. I have to find an alternative solution. For the heater I used 6.3 V DC.


I used a signal generator to test the circuit. It was very satisfying to see the Magic Eye Tube perform its magic. The above video should convince you.

Future work include soldering up another tube and mounting them in a box together with my Nixie-tube display and some hefty dekatrons.