Nixie Clock: Circuit Complete

I got the PCBs from OSHPark two days ago and finished assembling one board.

The assembled circuit.

The circuit boards straight from OSHPark.

The boards were well made but I made several errors when designing the board. The first thing I noticed was that I got the footprint wrong for the HV5622. I was too lazy to create my own footprint or even verify that the existing PQFP package would work. I only checked that the outlines for the body and the pin pitch matched, and didn't check how long the pins were. The footprint I used was just a little short and I had to trim the legs to get them to fit comfortably. I didn't trim the first HV5622 and I can only hope the solder made the connection (will soon find out during programming).

The nest issue was that for the digit separator IN-3 Nixie tubes I didn't consider which way was the front of the tube and if put them in their designated location they would end up backwards. Also the holes weren't big enough for the socket pins. Fortunately, the resistor in series with the tube was oriented the other direction and I was able to swap the position of the tube and resistor to solve all the issues.

The socket pins for the numerical tubes also barely fit into their correct holes. To further complicate the building process I just happened to choose the one of three boards that had a small manufacturing issue that left two pin holes still covered with solder mask. After a pit of work, I got the holes cleared up.

But everything else was fine and the board came together quite nicely. Solder wick and flux are you friends when working with SMD.

Time to begin programming.

Edit: Well I tried to run some basic problems and began to run into issues everywhere. For some reason the pull-up on the reset line of the AVR isn't pulling all the way to 5V. I'm temporarily holding the reset up to 5V with another wire and moving it away during programming. Also, the last nixie tube's zero and the right number separator won't fully turn off. I can't see any sign of a short, so there must be some conductive residue or something. I'll have to debug this some other day.

Also I just realized the logic level of the HV5622 was supposed to be 10-12V. Still works, but woops.