Hi guess what this is? It's a YouTube silver award and you've no doubt seen these things before. You get one of these puppies. when you hit a hundred thousand subscribers and you get a nice little note from somebody I've never heard of is apparently the CEO of YouTube Thank you very much. I surpassed a hundred thousand subscribers back in November 2013.

It actually took them two years to spend me one of these. and unlike the note actually says you've just done something very few Youtubers have been able to accomplish. you've had an astonishing 100,000 people subscribe to your channel. Well, I just checked and apparently it's 2017 and over 43,000 channels have one of these Youtube silver awards.

Back when I surpassed the back in 2013, I was probably a big deal to get what was it. Big deal to get one of these, but now 43 over 43,000 channels have surpassed a hundred thousand milestone. Us is crazy. Mentioned the Chinese Shot got another order for another five thousand.

You're kidding me. I with hand makes these things unbelievable. So I've now got four hundred and fifty thousand subscribers. I'm only ranked nine thousand, eight hundred and something in the world I'm actually going down with a bullet I've done a video on this I'll link them down below and why.

It's absolutely awesome how I'm actually going down in the rankings while my YouTube subscribers are going up. It's amazing and on a Science and technology channel and just to be in the top 500 Science and Technology Challenge you need over 220,000 subscribers or something like that. It's crazy. and because on Australian channel just to be on the top 100 Australian channels you need over 600,000 subscribers.

It's crazy. This is our huge YouTube is unbelievable. anyway. I've got a Youtube Silver Award They said it to me two years late and I've been thinking what can I do with this thing I Came up with a couple of ideas.

One is that it's not actually a real silver play button. It's like silver coated. but it's not solid silver. So I thought manufacture my own silver salt Li a pure silver play button but somebody's already done that then I thought I'll chop chop it in half and chemically analyze it with like a you know, a million dollar machine.

Somebody's already done that. So what can I do to my YouTube silver reward to customize that? make it a bit unique. Hmm. so it's got a boring hundred thousand subscribers silk-screened into this thing.

Oh What if I have a live counter that'd be much cooler. Not just any live counter, but retro old-school Nixie Tube Yeah, that sounds good. We've got one. So there you have it.

an X E to subscriber counter YouTube Silver Award Beauty It's a bit unique. it's a bit Eevee logging Love the vintage Nixie Two displays and yes, if you're wondering why the five looks weird, it's because those smart Russians they went are we don't have to design another plate for inside there for the number-5 We can just turn the to upside down everywhere. Use the plate bloody Rippa of an idea. Love it! We have a look at the back of it here.

It actually comes in framed in four separate aluminium sections here, held in with these little L brackets. So if we take these off we shall be able to slide off the side pieces and then get access to the backboard which we then have to chop into to put our display in. and Bob's your Uncle there it is! So what we want to do is actually cut out a window right across here so the Nixie tube board can well poke through from the back like that beauty. Ah will that like a bought one! And whilst the Nixie tubes were designed to fit in, the width of this thing are pretty much precisely.

Unfortunately, the back part of it is inset like this. so I had to file out a couple of parts on the side so that I can insert it from the back like that. No worries. I'll tell you what.

I Never really liked the dull gray background on this thing here. So I decided I'll get a nice matte black I was going to go with like a red thing but it just looked a little bit too much. Have a squeeze of that, you know? I Just say the you tube just doesn't come out but that should come out nicely. it's bit darker I Like that, Yeah, we don't need that stuck very well.

Pretty crappy glue quality. Will it fit? Come on. Oh I'll do that like a bought one. Beautiful! So if you're curious about how this works, we've got eight mixi two bar displays here.

You can still buy these. they are old and you know new old stock thing but they're very popular. You can still get them in. Russian We've got our mixi to buy display driver chips here.

these are actually I opened drain a cereal open drain driver chain with Zener clamping on the output to handle the high voltage. Speaking of which, we've got 12 volts in. We've got a 3 sorry a 5 volt regulator to power all the chips and on the backside we have what's called Believe It or Not a pile Oh Poo! Yes, I'll link it in down below that's its name, that's 160 volt mixi tube driver driver. It generates the high voltage required to drive all the Nexi Tube displays here and we've got a we Must D one mini here which is little Wi-Fi module and that runs all my code in there.

Programmed it with the Arduino environment I've got a separate a video on that it connects to my local Wi-Fi and then goes into the YouTube API which then it just gets the subscriber count and then displays it on the mixing tubes to easy Now I've actually done I believe seven previous videos on how to design this, how to how Nixie to display drivers work, how to design the high voltage driver section, and programming the We Must D one here and many with the Arduino environments laying out the PCB and doing the surface mount soldering of this. So I'll link in all those videos. they're in a playlist down below. Check it out and I'll very briefly go through the code here for those playing along at home.

I Set up my three data pins here data register, clock, and data clock and then I set the pin mode as output and then we are initialized the Wi-Fi module. We're using the We Must D 1 Mini Wi-Fi library and we're also using the YouTube API library as well, all linked in down below and then it just connects to the Wi-Fi and logs in with my password and everything else and gets the IP address and then our main routine down here. Just a gets our YouTube statistics. Of course the calls up the YouTube API.

It does take a little like only once per minute and then it calls up I Just get the number of subscribers here with my subscriber count I call up my micro Nick see right? lay here and all that does is simply convert the binary number to BCD because we have to display it on the screen so we need a binary coded decimal format for that and then we calculate the position for the display, blanking for the most significant digit and then we just go clear the display here and clear it by pulsing the register clock There, delay for a second and then we one run through our loop for all eight Nixie tube displays here from zero to eight and then within that. then we go through all of the digits from 1 to 10 and then we include 0 there. and we also do our display blinking and then we pulse our D clock and our clock actually by pulsing our our clock on there. Normally where you wouldn't do that in there because that register clock does shifts all the data out to the display.

Normally we'd only do that once at the end, once all the data is being shifted in, but by adding that pulse our clock in there, it gives it that groovy little spinny display that you saw before and that actually works quite well. It just gives it a little bit of effect rather than just magically a new number appearing I'm foo Anyway, I hope you like that. watch my subscriber subscriber count' Either go up or down or all over the shop it goes. It's generally been trending up for the last eight years I've been on YouTube I've been the full time for like seven years now, which is absolutely crazy.

Went full-time when I was ten thousand subscribers and I'll link of that one in down below of how I did that spilled video for this all link down below. there's multi parts, how to design this layout, the board, everything. So I hope you really enjoyed that. If you did, please give it a big thumbs up and subscribe if you already haven't anyway.

hope you like it. Catch you next time you.