A while ago I purchased some Russian nixie tubes, e.g. for my relay clock . The vendor sent me some IN-19 symbol tubes: the IN-19A, IN-19B, and IN-19V as a bonus. I didn't know what to do with them until I hit upon the idea of a symbolic revelator, patterned after Guy Marsden's Numeric Revelators. The idea is to flash random patterns of symbols and let the viewer cast an interpretation on them.
The IN-19B wouldn't light so I used an orphan Wang 340-004 as a replacement. The box was the container for some fancy watch that my wife purchased. I just got the box, but those are always the most fun part anyway.
The pattern is randomized as follows. A symbol on a tube lasts for a uniform random amount of time between .5 and 3.5 seconds. After that, a new symbol and new duration are randomly drawn. There are eight possible symbols on each tube, plus one possibility of drawing a blank (I use symbols 0-7 on the middle tube).
Here is a picture of whats inside the box. The drivers are allegro 5842s (now sourced by Micrel), one per tube. I made a socket for the Wang tube using pin receptacles.
