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Monitor voltage and power of a gaming computer - and display results with a vintage type digital display

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GusGus2012

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Hello, My nephew is a gaming computer enthusiast and I was thinking of building him a small device which could monitor both the voltage and current used by his computer. However, rather then purchasing one of the currently available dual voltage/current monitors from the likes of eBay or Aliexpress, I would like to make one and display the results using old Soviet VFD or Nixie tubes. Are there any types of voltage and current monitoring solutions which could obtain both the voltage and current and feed a BCD signal to something like a SN74441 chip which in turn would drive the Nixie based display? Any examples available which someone might have already created a Nixie type display of voltage or current usage? Thanks everyone.
 
Are you wanting to monitor the AC or DC side?

The DC side will require work because there are three main rails, +3V3, +5V and +12V (not to mention a -5V and -12V on older power supplies).
 
A lot of the available nixie clock kits are based around a PIC and some of them publish the source code.

It should be fairly straightforward to read an analog input channel instead, scale that and use the same display routines to show the voltage.

eg. There is a complete design with software for multiple CPU types here:

Or a separate C source here:

You could either select different ADC channels with the clock setting buttons, or use an external switch to select which PSU output is being displayed.
 
Thanks for the feedback. I was thinking to build up some sort of housing with the Nixie tubes built in along with an outlet that he would plug his computer into. That assembly would then be plugged into an outlet in the home. This would just be to monitor AC voltage and current and display the changes as he utilizes his gaming system.
 
Oh yes. The Kill-A-Watt might be a possibility. It displays exactly what I'm looking for on its LCD. Now to only figure out a way to hack it and send those results to separate voltage and current Nixie displays.
 
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