Super Slim Wristwatch Build

super-slim-wristwatch-build

This slmwtch lives up to its name. When the LCD screen is folded back onto the PCB the entire thing comes in at just 2.35mm. That’s including a coin-cell battery not shown above. Wow!

Part of what makes this possible is the specialized PCB design. [Anders] didn’t want to add more thickness than the screen and battery so he make a cutout in the PCB design to accept each component. In this image it’s easiest to see on the two SMD resistor in the upper left. They’re held in a void by the two solder connections. Admittedly this is not going to be a mass-production friendly design. And we have concerts about the long-term stability of suspending components by their leads. But as a one-off it’s fantastic! See for yourself in the video after the break.

The control for the watch uses two touch sensitive pads on the back of the PCB. There is no backlight for the display which can be a problem when trying to read the time while outdoors. We wonder if an ePaper display with similar dimensions is available?

33 thoughts on “Super Slim Wristwatch Build

    1. I was just about to say that, you beat me to it.
      Also, since the components are behind the lcd, they might also be able to be affixed to that. Its also probable that the watch will have a back to it, so the skin doesn’t affect the circuitry with sweat or just its normal conductivity. One could also affix components to this part also.

    2. not necessary. when using through-hole parts, we seldom pot the assembly after it has been put together. at the same time, though, through hole parts are “suspended” by their leads and that is the only support they receive. i think the design works fine as it is.

  1. And we have concerts about the long-term stability of suspending components by their leads.

    Are these concerts like Farm-Aid? Have any big name bands or singers signed up to perform? What is the concert schedule? B^)

  2. If there is no backlight, isn’t the LCD relying on reflected light, much like the LCDs used in calculators, for visibility? Why would sunlight pose a problem?

  3. If mass-production was a goal, skip the custom through-hole (lol) SMD components and build on a super-thin flexible PCB. That could be epoxied right on the back of the LCD. Custom rechargable LiPo batteries come in capacities all the way down to 5-10mAH, and I know of thin models in particular which were made at 40mAh with near-paper thinness.

  4. Actually, the memoryLCD is really good even in dim lighting. I would say it looks better than a e-paper (kindle at least) because when a pixel is white, it has this reflective background which seems better at reflecting ambient light back even without much ambient light. It actually looks better than most other reflective segment LCDs. I also like the possibility of fast refresh rates, up to 60 Hz, try that with e-paper…

    1. That’s what I’ve wanted for a long time, but it seems only the Chinese are willing to make it. Unfortunately they make it with that shit Chinese OS whose music player is useless if you have more than an album’s worth of music. :-(

      I gave up and bought a Sansa Clip to put Rockbox on. It was back when they were putting the iPod Nano on wristbands but I’m a flamboyant anythingbutipod.com guy. :-)

  5. I have a 70’s vintage lcd wrist watch that no longer functions. It might be amusing to re-stuff the innards with something more modern. Not sure this would fit.

    I can remember another watch, even earlier, with LED digits. The PCB broke into three pieces when my Dad was changing the batteries. He tried to superglue the board back together! Good try, but it did not work.

  6. I found this snippet to be fairly incredible:

    “With the CR1616 battery, which has a capacity of about 55 mAh, it should last a bit more than 1 year in the digital watch-face mode. And almost half a year in the analog watch-face mode. Calculating with average consumption of around 5 uA and 14 uA in the two modes”

    A MCU running a LCD on a small coin cell gets a year of runtime?! That’s amazing. I wonder if you could get that amount of energy from some kind of joule thief setup, using body temperature or something as a source.

    1. You could, but there would need to be some extra metal as a heat-sink. The MCU is completely underutilized in this setup… all it does is wakeup each second and update the display. The display is bi-stable, so it is only using energy when it is being changed.

      1. The display consumes around 300nA just displaying the static image. The MCU still has to keep track of time with a low frequency oscillator so it cannot be shut off between display updates. The EFM32 mcu consumes approximately 1uA with full RAM retention and crystal oscillator running. Most of the consumption comes from the framebuffer update and data-transfer every second, here autonomous DMA and SPI interface helps alot. There is a longer discussion on all the energy saving tricks in this application note: http://cdn.energymicro.com/dl/an/pdf/an0048_efm32_energy_friendly_display.pdf

  7. Very exciting to read all the comments here, great feedback certainly!

    Anders (@andlier) is the main guy behind the hardware design, but we made the concept together and I was mostly working on the software part and the watchface. Designing the hardware took us one day and after the PCBs came back we spent 1-2 days on getting things up and running. We used our company’s monthly hacking day and some after hours for it. Full disclosure, both of us work for Energy Micro as engineers.

    Mass production was certainly NOT our goal, it really is just a hack, pushing the boundaries of Anders’ soldering skills! :) The epoxy for filling the voids sounds like a good idea.

    Also, there is a difference between the Sharp memory LCDs and the e-paper display, although many companies present e-paper in their marketing material (Pebble for instance) when in reality they use memory LCDs.

    The combination of EFM32 and the Sharp display is the key here to extremely low current consumption, but of course the numbers wouldn’t be that impressive if we used more fancy features or wireless connectivity with Bluetooth LE.

  8. Damn! After seeing so many “business card” boards that are way too thick I was planning to do something similar. I intended to mount a TSSOP MSP430G2452 and some SMT LEDs upside down through a CNC milled board and a CR2012 battery in a cutout.

    I still might, but now you’re all going to think I copied this.

    1. That would be very interesting, don’t hesitate to ask us if you have further questions about the design! If you want to make it manufacturable, I would recommend just doing a thin PCB with components mounted in a standard fashion. I believe the thickness could be even thinner if doing a flex-pcb glued on the back of the memoryLCD. If going all the way you could then slip the whole thing into a 3d-printed wrist watch case with protective glass on top. And a lid at the back which holds the battery in place. The memoryLCD is a bit fragile so I strongly recommend some sort of protective glass and frame around it.

      1. I would definitely be interested in a kit, so long as its very hackable (though i’d probably screw around with software mostly). Unfortunately i “don’t have permission” to download the eagle files.

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