RotaDuck Is Way Cooler Than a Mechanical Counter

Let's say that you're an avid duck hunter and also very competitive with the other folks in your duck hunting group. You'll definitely want to keep a count of all the ducks you blast, so you can show up your buddies. To keep a tally, you might use one of those old school mechanical clicker counters. That would be easy, practical, and affordable. But if you want to be extra, you build Kevin Santo Cappuccio's RotaDuck Nixie tube counting device.

RotaDuck is a counting device. It keeps a running tally of every number you add to it. But it has a few features that make it much cooler than a typical mechanical counter. First, it displays the current count on a trio of Nixie tubes — and everything looks better on Nixie tubes. Second, it lets you add any number between one and nine to your count. Manage to take down two ducks with a single shell? Just dial a "2," Rambo. You can also do the same for subtracting numbers. Finally, you can display the count for each individual day.

Aside from those eye-catching Nixie tubes, the most striking feature of RotaDuck is the rotary dial. That comes from an old rotary telephone. As I explained in my own volume controller project, you can count the pulses of a rotary dial to determine what number the user entered. In this case, spinning the dial also provides voltage to drive the logic and to read/write the current count in EEPROM. Cappuccio didn't provide much information on RotaDuck's components or schematics, but it seems that the 9V battery on the back of the device provides the power for the Nixie Tubes.

The current version of RotaDuck is a rough prototype, but Cappuccio plans to design a more streamlined PCB so that others can build their own RotaDucks. Even if you aren't into serial duck murder, this device would be useful for many other counting applications.