I've ordered a couple IN-16 Nixie tubes and a small set of 74141 drivers. I plan on using the guts of a disposable camera to power them and I'll be running it with my UNO. I'm pretty new with Arduino, I was wondering, since each nixie tube will need 4 pins from the 74141, how to I deal with not having enough outputs on the board? I understand how to binary and HIGH/LOW to control one 74141. I assume I need another driver between the Arduino and the 74141's. It would be nice if someone could explain how to deal with this in detail for when I plan on using more tubes.
Perfect, thank you. Although that seems pretty complicated. Ill try to make sense of it when I begin working on things, but in the meantime if anyone has any more help or tips i would appreciate it.
Actually, I have another question. If the Nixie tubes are using approx. 200 volts, how can these 74HC595 IC's handle them? How to you wire them so that you don't blow up your 74HC595?
simple. the 595's never touch the 200 volts. the 74141 chip handles the high voltage switching and the shift register handles the logic. you would wire 4 of the 595 outputs to the a b c and d inputs of the 74141 chip. you could drive 2 nixie tubes per shift register.