ELITE NL840 Nixie Clock Kit with Tubes.
[ELITENL840TU]

The Elite 840 Nixie Clock is a successor to the previous NL-840 kit which I have also built. I'm partial to the NL-840 nixie as it features true "5"s and not the upside down "2" as used in the similarly sized IN-8 tubes. Since the NL-840 is a tube with pins instead of wires, it is very easy to rotate the tubes to new positions for best appearance. Improvements include PIR support to extend the life of the nixie tubes; support for both wired and wireless NTP sources such as the Xterna; programmable LED base lighting instead of just a single color; dual indicator colon support and crossfading digits in the dimmed mode. This clock features direct drive on each tube for smooth display effects and no flicker. The menus are similar to the earlier 840 clock except there are many more options in the menu to customize the performance of this clock. You have a choice of either acrylic cases or the machined metal types that are shared with the QTC series clocks. The assembly is well documented and easy to follow. The separate display board, which sits just above the main clock board, allows for more features in the same space as compared to the previous NL-840 clock. There are some surface mount components that are pre-mounted and the rest of the assembly is really easy and straight forward to follow. The base lighting uses newer addressable LED's and reduces the number of resistors needed to install. The resulting clock is a beauty and performs as advertised! I chose the acrylic base so that I could see the black circuit boards and components. I'm very pleased with the performance of the Elite 840 and would highly recommend this kit to anyone that wants an excellent nixie clock with side view tubes....

Bought this kit as a bit of an impulse-buy, but one I am certainly not going to regret. This kit is a joy to build, clear manual and beautiful silkscreened boards. When one of the numerals refused to work, I had a quick chat with a support engineer via the chat window on the website. He identified the likely cause and after a quick reflow of an smd connection, the clock was working fine. You can see this is a mature product by the amount of options, it has all the clock and lighting functionality that you can imagine. It's wonderful that you can configure an expensive piece of kit you your own liking. I am really happy with my choice of the NL840 tubes, their fine mesh is nearly invisible and I love the proper 5 numeral. Also, I was worried the numerals would be tiny because I read somewhere that the numerals on the NL840 are 15.5mm high, but mine are 18mm, so I worried for nothing. The finished clock is a joy to look at, with its constantly changing seconds digits. Here is a video of the finished article: https://youtu.be/GNJKnL_Vh04 Cheers, Patrick...