Hi! I saw nonentity post pictures of his clock in another forum and it just gave this urgent desire to build my own clock. This working with soldering business seems fun too.

I've never ever done anything like it before so right now it all seems like voodoo to me. But if I get this right I would need an arduino board which I must buy separately, and if I look at the arduino site, ArduiNIX works with an earlier revision, not the latest. correct?

I assume that a driver shield is like an add-on board that can be connected to the Arduino board and that is what ArduiNIX is. 

Also I don't want to make it too easy for me so I am thinking of buying just the board and installing components myself, or is that too much you think for a noob?

My plan is to make myself an alarm clock, I just haven't found a good alarm clock in stores. Something I saw came close, namely this:


So the idea so far is to buy some cheap twin-bell clock like that and take out the innards and place a nixie clock inside, maybe replace the front glass with smoked glass and have the tubes behind that. Is the arduino and arduinix small enough you think to fit inside such a housing? I think they are usually 7-8 inches in diameter.