I use a NodeMCU (ESP8266) device to drive B7971 nixie tubes using 8 x 74HC595 shift registers and 8 x SN75468 high voltage transistor arrays.

I talk about the code that makes this work, including using a Lua table to create a lookup table mapping characters to hex values that are sent to the shift registers to light the correct segments on the Nixie display.

The Lua code is available as a gist.

See also my B7971 character designer and some notes on using the SN75468 high voltage driver.