With the PCB fabrication services available to the modern hobbyist, it’s become increasingly common to see replacement boards designed for all sorts of devices. Even so, it’s sometimes still a little difficult to believe that we’re at the point where hardware hackers are now producing advanced replacement PCBs for commercial wristwatches such as this drop-in upgrade for the iconic Casio G-Shock by [David Volovskiy].
Honestly, we’d have been impressed if the thing could just tell the time. But the replacement board combined with the open source firmware brings new capabilities that far exceed anything the G-Shock was capable of originally. The upgraded watch now offers several applications, such as a pedometer and a number of games including simplified versions of Blackjack and Wordle. The watch can tell you the phase of the Moon, calculate sunrise and sunset, and display values pulled from the internal thermometer.
Even if you don’t have a G-Shock in need of a new PCB, [David] has put together a web-based emulator that lets you play around with the firmware. The online tool that lets you visualize how the watch’s LCD is mapped is also very slick. For those interested in getting a board of their own, you can join the project’s Discord server and get your name on the list for an upcoming production run.
If some of this sounds familiar, it’s because [David] based his project on [Joey Castillo]’s Sensor Watch, which is a replacement PCB for the Casio F-91W. With these two projects available for others to build from, one wonders how many other Casio watches might get their own upgraded hardware in the future.
There’s an off-by-one error in the “playground” when you display the current time: the month shows “5” instead of “6”.
Why only doing this for the cheap and ugly ones? Why not for a PRG-80T or a PRT-1? From time to time I thought about this myself, but there is nothing I could program in my watch that they can’t do now and that I need.
This is DW-5600. The classic G-Shock. Some are not cheap.
Numbers Protrek doesn’t have it, far more 5600 out there
Maybe the people who made those replacement PCBs came to the same conclusion you did about the not-ugly-ones?
Probably you are right. :-D But a PRT-1 has, a very low contrast, grafic screen. We can try to install Doom on it. :-D
BTW: I just had an idea for a watch! I should be possible to install a small chess computer inside. HM…I have to think about it.
The 5600 is mans watch. The prg is cheap but is not as Manly.
Definitely a “we do it because we can” project. I’m all for it.
This is a super project, I love the idea. I had a Casio G-shock almost identical to the one featured, and wore if for years. The battery went flat so I had a jeweller replace it. The next time I went surfing the display filled up with water, went all black and never worked again. It turned out the jeweller had cross-threaded the backplate :( I should have looked at it more closely after they’d done the replacement.
The recharchable battery of a better G-shock last for 20years. It is charged with a very small solar cell. I replaced my battery a few years ago. You can not trust to be water proof so long time if the watch is not tested every 1-2year. And Casio had strange definition what 30m, 50m and 100m means. It is different from the reader expectation. For example for a 30m it is not allowed to press a button under 0.1m water. 100m means, you can use it for swimming if it is tested on a regular base.
BTW: I am a professional hardware developer myself, especially for low power devices. But I am very much impressed by the low power work of the watch designer at Casio. I think this is also a huge challenge if you develope your own PCB. It can end up you have to replace the battery every few month instead of years. .-)
Oh and did you know that the older G-watch have a high voltage boost converter for the light? I think they made around 80-100V for the light-foil behind the screen.
those 30m, 50m, 100m are horizontal measurements, but of course they never told us.