An Arduino Watch You Would Actually Want To Wear

Leather work, copper tubing, small easy to use package. Now that is a beautiful Arduino Watch. [Matthew Garten] has retrofitted his old Arduino Watch and given us the details that we crave.

Previously, all we had was a video and a few pictures of a quite uninviting watch. But now we know it has temperature, range finding, and trackball input while displaying time, games, and more with its 128 by 128 pixel OLED 16 bit display. And did we mention the much more enticing steampunk case?

37 thoughts on “An Arduino Watch You Would Actually Want To Wear

  1. “An Arduino Watch you would actually want to wear”

    No, no it’s not. And I’m not bashing the Arduino part, or the craftsmanship, it’s just majorly butt ugly and steampunk in general ranges somewhere between goth and emo taste-wise (in other words, for people that have no taste what so ever).

  2. I also came to hate on steampunk. Looks like the party got started without me.

    I actually like everything else about the watch, but those… lens holders? Hideous.

  3. Yeesh. Even if I didn’t hate steampunk, which I do, the lens holder things are going to snag on every blasted thing that comes within arm’s reach. No, not a watch I want to wear.

  4. “And did we mention the much more enticing steampunk case?”

    dont you mean osgeld punk

    its a cool watch but not something I would wear outside of a costume party

  5. bichazz neysayers, this is awesome, great work there Matthew, fuggin no talent over inflated ego azz holes with their negativity… go sit in your basement and… and…. well just go away

  6. You are not going to where this anywhere near any female’s sweater, if said female would let you wear something like this. Could not where it on an airplane, you would be tackled and beaten for trying to carry a grenade on the plane. What are those things for? Only thing I can see the ring thingies doing is covering the display.

    You might be able to wear it in a UFC match, it look like you could seriously hurt someone with it, as long as you held it behind your back. If I saw someone with that on their arm, I would probably be on alert for some kind of thuggery.

  7. Hackaday comments are starting to remind me of YouTube comments. Seems like every post is littered with how much people hate it or how much it sucks. A damn shame, really :(

  8. @Jussi
    The main purpose of the watch is to allow for various sensors to be connected to the watch and get feedback without being connected to computer. The Arduino has hundreds of libraries and projects to draw on in that development. And blog cred is nice, too :-)

    @Edward5 and sinoth
    Thanks, it’s like ads you tune them out.

  9. From a technical standpoint, the workmanship is excellent. The aesthetics however leave a good deal to be desired, but then that is something endemic to steam-punk.

    The big problem I have with the steam-punk style is the decision to go clunky and large. It misrepresents the technical abilities of the real Victorians.

    The Victorians prized functionality, which is why their inventions things were very industrial at times, but they would strive to miniaturize things as much as was practical.

    The steam punk aesthetic seems more like gnome-punk to me. The dungeons and dragons gnomes.

    Hollywood visions of the Victorian era be damned.

  10. I have no problem with steampunk stuff.

    I do, however, hate arduinos as well as goofy display watches that suck battery life and aren’t much more useful than a normal watch.

    If they used AVR or PIC directly, or if they went as far as an ARM, I would totally wear this.

  11. I really like the trackball thing and the idea of a color lcd watch with games and stuff.
    But that’s all. The thing is hideous and impossible to wear in any circumstances. Even without the lenses it’s clunky. And heavy! It has that large battery, wooden frame, lots of leather, lots of pcb’s. If you want to do something small like a watch, don’t use the kit versions of the components! Use smd’s, all soldered on the same pcb. It’s going to be much smaller, and you won’t have that wire mess (instructables, step 11).
    But again, I haven’t made a watch this complex before, so the guy is better than me :P

  12. I can’t believe anyone still wears anytype of watch these days. Digital clocks are on anything with a power connection and unless you’re a Luddite, you pretty much ALWAYS have your cell phone nearby. So whats the point of still wearing a watch?

  13. @Vonskippy: My phone is always in my pocket, and can be a right pain to get to if I’m sitting down, or of the particular pants I’m wearing at the time are too tight across the openings of the pockets to be able to access their cargo all that easily. Whereas my watch is always on my wrist, far more accessible. Plus my watch battery isn’t going to run out every couple of days :P

  14. Excellent craftsmanship! I’m impressed. Not quite my style, but to each their own. I really like the OLED screen. The capability to display a lot of data is possible, it’s not necessarily just a clock.
    Weather, RSS feeds, etc etc.

  15. “I do, however, hate arduinos …If they used AVR or PIC directly, or if they went as far as an ARM, I would totally wear this.”

    Oh stfu M4CGYV3R, do you see a 30$ board hanging off of the thing? NO so what is the difference tween using a “stand alone” avr that was programmed with avrgcc and a “stand alone” avr that was programmed with arduino + avrgcc

    if no one had said anything your dumbass would not have even known

  16. @mihaliv
    If you are interested email me either from my site or through instructables and I’ll see what I can do!

    @fenwick Check out the instructable, the lenses are easy to put on or off :-)

    @David I guess that’s what I get for doing video editing at 4AM. Next video I’ll have to fix that.

    On the whole “who wears a watch” thread:
    I saw that less people have been wearing watches (including myself) and thought, there is some real estate I can use for a project, so that is part of where the design started.

  17. I like steampunk as long as it is practical, functional and well crafted. I’ve yet to see any projects that satisfy all three, although the cell phone with the punch card dialing system was cool.

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