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I have a three questions about the power controller & batteries.

• To fit batteries, I think I need to just undo all the bolts that hold the top of the power controller to the bottom and then it will be obvious. Once I've done that, will the power controller deal with charging the batteries?
• If there are batteries will state be kept so long as the batteries are alive (I mean things like 12/24 hr settings &c)?
• Finally, there's a little switch on top of the power controller: what does that do?

Thanks!

PS I am really pleased with my clock.

Remove the centre bolt on the side with the battery cover and one side bolt, it will then slide out. The switch is to switch battery backup on/off.

Thank you.

A hint for people as stupid as me: before you reassemble the thing with the batteries in it, check that there are volts across the battery pack, because it's really easy for the batteries not to make contact properly (this isn't a problem with the battery holder it's just something that these things always suffer from in my experience).

The battery holders are tighter than they could be, possibly the rechargeable cells are a bit bigger but they should make an allowance for that. Probably shaving an extra mm off somewhere adds up to a large saving over a few thousand mouldings.

I think all battery holders are like this -- certainly all the ones I've used have been.

Slghtly related question: do you know what the power consumption is when the nixies are off (and when they're on I suppose, I have the 5-tube one). Based on holding my hand over it it can't be very high. I'm just wondering if I should worry about turning it off the way I worry about turning (incandescent) bulbs off, but I suspect not.

If the clock is stable, about 300-350mA at 15V. I will need to measure the input to the wall wart but I would guess in the region of 6W. If the tubes are off it's about 100mA.

Thanks: no need to measure it unless you want to: anything ~10W is really so low it doesn't matter I think (and with the nixies off it sounds more like 1.5W from what you say).

What position should the switch be in to enable battery backup?

judge wrote:What position should the switch be in to enable battery backup?

Towards the centre of the supply: to the right if the supply is oriented with the connectors towards you (at least this is true for mine, I've just checked it).