For a time, pocketwatches were all the rage, but they were eventually supplanted by the wristwatch. [abe] built this cyberpunk Lock’n’Watch to explore an alternate history for the once trendy device.
The build was inspired by the chunky looks of Casio sport watches and other plastic consumer electronics from the 1980s and 90s. The electronics portion of this project relies heavily on a 1.28″ Seeed Studio Round Display and a Raspberry Pi 2040 XIAO microcontroller board. The final product features a faux segmented display for information in almost the same color scheme as your favorite website.
[abe] spent a good deal of the time on this project iterating on the bezel and case to hold the electronics in this delightfully anachronistic enclosure. We appreciated the brief aside on the philosophical differences between Blender, TinkerCAD, and Fusion360. Once everything was assembled, he walks us through some of joys of debugging hardware issues with a screen flicker problem. We think the end result really fulfills the vision of a 1980s pocketwatch and that it might be just the thing to go with your cyberdeck.
We’ve seen accelerometers stuffed into old pocketwatch cases, a more useful smart pocketwatch, or you could learn how to repair and restore vintage watches.
Is it water-proof?
it’d better be, its always raining in the dystopian future.
Not in the Mad Max movies.
with cyberpunk you’re in more of a bladerunner environment.
Ah! I accept your clarification!
So, the dystopian post-nuclear apocalypse color scheme is blue and yellow? Like Fallout? Or is it Ukraine?
But seriously, nice build.
Great build & video! 👍
We definitely need more pocket watches!
This is awesome.
Now, if he 3D prints a couple of loops on opposite sides, and some straps from a more flexible filament, it could be worn on a wrist!
A Raspberry Pi to build a watch….. Doh!
A microcontroller for his 240p display. Were you expecting 555s?
Of course not, but a Pi looks like overkill to me
Other microcontrollers (less powerful, but also less power hungry) are also capable of driving that kind of display.
I don’t want to start a holy war about it, it’s just that it seems a bit oversized to me
I’m more disgusted that he uses that VIM clone instead of real VIM.
vim ? huh… he should use ‘vi’ , or , better, ‘ex’
An RP2040 is not a Pi.
What software was he using to design the screens?
Aseprite
Thank you!
Cyber art. If you want cyber punk a good contender is the sensor watch, a replacement PCB for a common ancient digital watch. Hard to get more punk in the cyber than replacing the guts of something made by a faceless megacorp to make it do what you want.