A hacker hacked his Nixie clock to show when the next bus is coming

A maker named Justin Scott bought a standard two-digit Nixie tube clock board, but wanted it to be more useful than just telling the time. He reverse-engineered the board's STM8 microcontroller, flashing custom firmware using a ST-LINK programmer to free up I/O pins and create a serial connection to a Raspberry Pi Zero.

On the Pi, a Python script queries a local bus schedule API and sends the minutes-until-arrival data back to the clock. The hack repurposes the existing decimal points as status indicators, transforming a decorative timepiece into a practical, at-a-glance transit display. This project demonstrates how even closed, single-purpose commercial hardware can be repurposed for clever, custom automation with enough curiosity and low-level debugging.