I received a new kit for vacuum fluorescence display from Günter (gr-pojects). Thanks a lot!

It is a clock with Type IV-11 vacuum fluorescent display tubes for hours, minutes and seconds, and an IV-18 tube for date display, and IV-3 for displaying the day of the week. The clock consists of a mainboard with power supply, CPU, MP3 module and driver blocks for the tubes. The time is set and synchronized via an externally connected DCF-77 receiver. Later, the board will be extended with a real-time clock circuit. The power supply for the entire circuit comes from a small plug-in power supply with 12V / 1.2A. The total power consumption is about 450mA. As a special feature, the clock has a small MP3 sound module with MicroSD card slot. This receives from the microcontroller via the serial interface every quarter of an hour a corresponding command to play an MP3 file. Thus the quarter of an hour is signaled with a “gong beat”, half an hour with two and three quarters of an hour with three “gong strikes”. At the full hour, the corresponding time is announced.

The entire circuit is built into an aluminum-acrylic housing. All fittings are milled and screwed. A video of the structure and the function can be seen below: