I had just completed this build. Tubes all seemed to go through the test routine and HV calibration properly. After doing the initial setup I did get it working, displaying the correct time, but I needed to power off to move it and start working on an enclosure. When I powered it on later, I immediately noticed problems. No smoke, nothing hot to the touch, just misbehaving. The tubes are blank but the neon separators are constant on. Usually the LEDs turn red, though I have seen the LEDs stay off as in the picture I provided. Visually checked the assembly and I don't see anything obviously wrong. I had bought 2 of these kits at the same time and I've tried all combinations of the 2 ESP8266 and 2 Atmega controllers that I was shipped with same results each time.
I can get it working again, temporarily. It seems if I factory reset the clock controller and (if I can get it to connect to wifi) reset the wifi and clock configs on the wifi controller, then go through normal setup procedure again, it will work. But, it will do the same thing again when I power cycle it.
Here is a video of the clock functioning normally after setup and failing on power cycle.
Video
If I remove the wifi module, the clock will run as expected but with default settings and the time set as default in the firmware. Replacing the wifi module will bring back the malfunction.
I was able to get the status during that error state once when the wifi module connected to the network:
WLAN IP 192.168.1.143
WLAN MAC E8:DB:84:DA:3A:42
WLAN SSID UniFi_Legacy
NTP Pool pool.ntp.org
TZ CST6CDT,M3.2.0,M11.1.0
Clock Name ESP-DA3A42 (esp-da3a42.local)
Last NTP time 2021:11:06 22:06:22
Last NTP update 7 s ago
Time before next NTP update 2 h 53 s
Display Time 2021:11:06 22:06:29
Uptime 12 s
Version vx58c
Serial Number 000979
Status string WNSUAd
Total clock on time 7 m 0 s
Communicating with: Clock not found!
ESP8266 information
Name Value
Sketch compiled Oct 14 2020 21:08:01
Sketch size 452160
Free sketch size 507904
Free heap 23736
Boot version 31
CPU Freqency (MHz) 160
SDK version 2.2.2-dev(38a443e)
Chip ID 14301762
Flash Chip ID 1440d8
Flash size 1048576
Last reset reason Power On
Vcc 3.35
LED_BUILTIN / Used 2/1
I noticed there was no I2C slave listed.
This is the status when I can get it working after resetting everything:
WLAN IP 192.168.1.143
WLAN MAC E8:DB:84:DA:3A:42
WLAN SSID UniFi_Legacy
NTP Pool pool.ntp.org
TZ CST6CDT,M3.2.0,M11.1.0
Clock Name ESP-DA3A42 (esp-da3a42.local)
Last NTP time 2021:11:05 16:54:22
Last NTP update 1 m 23 s ago
Time before next NTP update 1 h 59 m 38 s
Display Time 2021:11:05 16:55:45
Uptime 4 m 17 s
Version vx58c
Serial Number 000979
Found I2C slave (Nixie clock) (ping, preferred) 105
Status string WNSUAd
Total clock on time 6 m 0 s
Communicating with: NixieFirmwareV2, I2C v62
ESP8266 information
Name Value
Sketch compiled Oct 14 2020 21:08:01
Sketch size 452160
Free sketch size 507904
Free heap 21752
Boot version 31
CPU Freqency (MHz) 160
SDK version 2.2.2-dev(38a443e)
Chip ID 14301762
Flash Chip ID 1440d8
Flash size 1048576
Last reset reason Software/System restart
Vcc 3.35
LED_BUILTIN / Used 2/1
When the clock does a normal startup it displays version 3.56.
I probed with my multimeter looking at the diagrams but I have not figured out anything concrete as a cause. This is what I have seen during the error state:
HV is at 210 volts, pin 23 of the controller is at 2.6 volts.
SCL reads at 5 volts but SDA is at 0 volts. VCC is 5 volts on the main board and 3.3 on the wifi module. (Pins 3 and 5 on the wifi module read 3.3 and 0 volts respectively, seeming to correlate with the SCL/SDA pads on the main board).
At this point I am stuck and could really use some help fixing or diagnosing the problem. Thank you!