It took just about two years since I ordered it from Kickstarter for it to arrive, which is kind of a standard time frame for Kickstarter, but it was long enough that I had completely forgotten about it.
Some minor gripes:
- I strongly question the design decision of using 5 Nixie tubes instead of 6. That middle one just alternates between plus and minus, so the numbers only change once a minute. If there were 6 tubes we could have had a permanent second display like the NixieChron does.
- It is fantastically hard to get it to levitate the first time. It takes me about five minutes each time, and that means that every few seconds the floater slams hard into the base. And I don't mean "fall" I mean "powered descent at 4 gravities". This isn't going to end well.
- It's supposed to stay floating in case of power failure. It does not. Boom.
- It didn't come with a manual, not even a URL on a post-it note. Since there have been several kit-based iterations of this, it took me a while to find the operating instructions (which are here, by the way.) Apparently some previous version of this was configured by waving your hands around in the air above it. This version is not that version, but I found that manual first, so that led to quite some time of me wildly gesturing at this levitating glowing thing like some Harry Potter cosplaying lunatic.
- And the way you configure it is... complete lunacy, even compared to the typical UI standards of "how to set the time on a clock or a Microwave", which was already complete lunacy. You're used to "press button A to advance, press button B to configure, hope you can guess what the beeps mean?" Ho ho ho, welcome to the next level: the control here is an invisible capacitive touch button, just one, and to toggle, say, setting 3, you gesture near the button until the audio tone changes frequency 3 times... and then you wait a little bit longer and flee quickly. Oops, you advanced to 4! Try again! It's koo-koo-pants.
Still. It is sorcery. Glorious sorcery.
Update: After a few weeks, I couldn't tolerate it any more, and packed it away. The slightest bump makes it fall, and then I would be compelled to stand there wasting 5 minutes trying to get it to float again, and failing. It was like having an itch you can never scratch. So now it's in a box somewhere. Want it? It's yours.
Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.
