“That whole project started a while back with an hackaday article from 2014 in which [Johngineer] build the ‘ChronodeVFD’, a wristwatch made from an old soviet vacuum fluorescent display. It kind of triggered the ‘shut up and take my money’ reflex in me, but as it wasn’t for sale and didn’t have any design details available I quickly had to scrap that.
Fast forward a bit, during a late night eBay shopping spree (as one usually does…), I stumbled upon a listing from an Ukrainian guy who sold an IVL2-7/5 VFD - the exact same model used for the ChronodeVFD. After a bit of back and forth with the seller I ended up with a box of these babies neatly wrapped in what seems like Russian newspaper - nice!However, I now realised that I had no clue how to drive these things or even how they worked, so some googling was in order.”