TubeCube Gives Electronic Badges a Retro Glow

VFD tubes combine the distinctive look of a Nixie tube with the warm retro glow of an alphanumeric display. Can you imagine wearing a badge with your name spelled out in such tubes? Well, thanks to Steve Ball, aka hamster, it is a reality. He created TubeCube which is an add-on for the SAINTCON badge that drives IV-17 VFD tubes. And it is gorgeous.

There are three advantages to using a VFD tube over a Nixie tube. The first is that the VFDs tend to be more robust. The second, it only takes about 24 volts for them to light-up. Finally, the VFD tubes are in less demand, so they are a little cheaper than Nixies.

Electronic badges like the one used at SAINTCON are becoming very popular among technical conferences. A fun extension to these badges are add-ons, made popular by the DEFCON SAO ("something" add-on.) Unfortunately, with the SAO style, there is not much in the way of a specification. The shape of an SAO is up to the designer. While the lack of standard form factor makes for unique designs, sometimes constraints help.

One reason hamster picked the minibadge format for his VFD add-on is its size constraint. It is a fixed 0.8 inches square. His ingenious design creates a cube out of four such boards.

Inside of the minibadge cube is a boost regulator to drive the tubes. As hamster says, you can go "moar bright" with 70 volts, but 24 volts is enough for them to look terrific. If you'd like to learn how to make a badge or minibadge add-on, be sure to check out hamster's SAINTCON talk. He explains how to create a badge, starting with artwork, then circuit design, and how to manufacture them.

Also, according to the rumor mill, he is planning to post a build video on his YouTube channel, so be sure to subscribe to that to see when it is available. In the meantime, the schematic and PCB files are available in his GitHub repository.