Prototyping is going well.
Hard to see in the picture but there is a decimal point on the 3rd digit.
The holes in the sockets for the center of the tubes is the perfect size for a Neopixel which make for some really cool backlighting. Here’s a video I took off it in a test mode:
The backlight is super pretty. I hadn’t even thought about that with my nixie clock design, and now you’ve made me completely rethink the aesthetics. Thanks. (Truly, thanks.)
Dogfighter built, just needs some Velcro tape to stick the battery on underneath.
Much bigger prop and motor than the previous planes. Should be zoomy. 
Do I have the perfect cake for this:
I’m really pleased how it turned out. The hole in the center of the socket is the perfect size for a Neopixel. The center of the socket is where the pinch goes, so the super low profile SMD Neopixel doesn’t block anything. I used 3 of the breadboard size Neopixels (https://www.adafruit.com/products/1312) and just hot glued them into the bottom of the nixie socket. It’s actually a perfect fit sliding right into the area between the pins.
I think the reason it works so well is because there’s an opaque layer below the cathodes so rather than the super bright LED flooding the cathodes the surrounding glass acts as kind of a light tube creating this really cool glow around the whole thing. It doesn’t affect the visibility of the numbers at all.
I have a lot of stuff left to do. I need to figure out the permanent board layout. I’m actually using a lot more parts than I anticipated originally (I thought I could get away with 2 shift registers instead of 3, but 3 is much easier to program). Despite the tiny size of the Arduino Micro I’m using, it takes up a surprising amount of room when I’m trying to keep things as compact as possible. I may have to switch to an Arduino Pro Mini instead. Once I get a final board size settled on I can start getting the case designed in Visio so I can laser cut it. I also have a lot of code to write.
Now that I have basic counter/color/temperature stuff working I need to go past it being a prototype and actually get the functionality I want. I plan to have 3 different buttons: display mode, color mode, and reset.
The display mode switch will change between Celsius/Fahrenheit, barometer, sequential counter, and random counter. The color mode will switch between R/G/B, temperature-sensitive (red illumination for temperature going up, blue illumination for temperature going down, white for unchanging), rainbow mode, and of course “off”. The reset button will just reset the microcontroller.
Progress is slow since it’s hard to find time to work on this but I’ll post updates once I have 'em.
I found some small SW ships (Aluminum Falcon, The Ghost & Slave 1) @ Walmart for $4.99 - Diecast by Hot Wheels & with a bit of paint they go from this:
to something more like this (still got a few coats & some air brushing to go, but you get the idea):
Note: It’s still wet, so the dark lines will lighten considerably when the water evaporates and leaves paint on the edges where it will pool as it dries.
I didn’t grab a “before” of The Ghost, but even a few touches of paint helps - I still have a bit of work to do on the base coats and will add some blaster scoring marks on it once I finish up the base on the falcon as I’ll need to break out the air brush for those:
(If you aren’t familiar with this ship from “Rebels” here is a marketing promo for it, and thanks to marketing it looks a bit better there than what I started with - and here is, I think, a promo from the show by the big D.
I’m still plugging away on Doctor Strange, but I took some time to help a friend with her Rey outfit.
I made the shirt, the wrap is just some crinkle gauze I had on hand, the pants and belts are altered thrift-store items. She’s working on the staff and the bracer, and I repurposed an ancient thrifted purse for the belt bag.
It is always amazing what a simple wash can do to make space ships go from meh to lookin’ good.
kind of the most important thing, floating
Wow, there are some seriously talented people here!
Finally have a milestone completed in the kitchen:
Wow, starting to look really, really great!
Looks great! I have done enough drywall myself to know what a pain in the ass it is to get it to this stage.
What kind of color or colors are you going with?
A cool pallet this time around, with a green, a blue and a grey with ultra white trim. The catch is that I’m painting nearly the entire ground floor as part of this project. The colors will carry through the house. Guess my SO has finally had it with the super bright colors the house has been since I moved in and painted everything that was beige or white. 
I’m documenting this whole project, so pics will go up as serious progress is made. With any luck, I’ll have a half finished tile floor to post next Monday (half, as in, tile down, but not grouted).
IT’S DONE
Pictures of me in it will have to wait for the weekend though.
Edit: Uploaded a better picture with the Eye.
Sweet work. My only nitpick is the mold lines could use cleaning but it probably ins’t that obvious from 4 feet away. They need some proper basing though.
What game are they for?
It was originally intended for a GURPS Banestorm game.
Our heroes were heading for an encounter with a nasty necromancer/pirate in a galley powered by inexhaustible zombies; a zombie Ogre was the baddies’ main dragon.
The game dissolved due to mental illness on the GM’s (me) part before we got to that encounter, unfortunately.
