THP Semifinalist: OSHWatch

September 28, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 21 Comments

No, it’s not a finely crafted wrist accessory from Cupertino, but [Jared]’s OSHWatch, but you’re actually able to build this watch thanks to an open design and reasonable, hand-solderable layout.

Built around a case found on DealExtreme that looks suspiciously similar to enclosures meant to hold an iPod Nano, [Jared]’s smartwatch includes a 128×128 RGB OLED display, magnetometer, accelerometer, Bluetooth 4.0 transceiver, and a lithium-ion charger and regulator circuit. Everything is controlled with a PIC24, which should mean this watch has enough processing power to handle anything a watch should handle.

As for the UI and what this watch actually does [Jared] is repurposing a few Android graphics for this watch. Right now, the watch can display the time (natch), upcoming appointments on his schedule, accelerometer and magnetometer data, and debug data from the CPU. It’s very, very well put together, and repurposing an existing watch enclosure is a really slick idea. Videos below.

The project featured in this post is a quarterfinalist in The Hackaday Prize.

Continue reading “THP Semifinalist: OSHWatch” →

THP Quarterfinalist: WALLTECH Smartwatch

September 17, 2014 by Eric Evenchick 13 Comments

While there is lots of hype about a big company launching a new wearable product, we’re more interested in [Walltech]’s open source OLED Smartwatch. This entry into The Hackaday Prize merges a collection of sensors and an OLED screen into a wearable device that talks to your smartphone over Bluetooth Low Energy.

The device is based on the IMUduino BTLE development board. This tiny Arduino clone packs an inertial measurement unit (IMU), a Nordic nRF8001 Bluetooth radio, and an ATMEGA32u4 microcontroller.

The 1.5″ OLED display comes from [miker] who makes an OLED module based on the SSD1351. A STP200M 3D pedometer provides activity monitoring in a tiny package.

On the hardware side, packaging all these components into something that will fit on your wrist is quite difficult. The prototype hardware is built from mostly off the shelf components, but still manages to be watch sized.

At this point, it looks like the code is the main challenge remaining. There’s a lot of functionality that could be implemented, and [Walltech] even mentions that it’s designed to be very customizable. It even supports Android; the Apple Watch can’t do that.

The project featured in this post is a quarterfinalist in The Hackaday Prize.

Watch Out Artists, Robots Take Your Job Next

September 16, 2014 by Rich Bremer 26 Comments

Move over Claude Monet, there is a new act in town in the form of a robot capable of creating some pretty cool art.

We’ve seen robotic artists before but most of them are either cartesian-based or hanging drawbots. This is a full-fledged Sharpie-wielding robotic arm that draws with dots giving its work an impressionistic feel.

The actual robotic arm is a stock Interbotix WidowX. The folks over at Phantom Multimedia wrote some custom software that takes a graphic and breaks it down into a 1-bit representation. The code then goes through the bitmap at random, picking points to draw on the medium. The hard part of this project was figuring out how to translate the 2D image into 3D robotic arm movements. Since the arm has several joints, there are multiple mathematical solutions for arm position to move the marker to any given point. The team ended up writing an algorithm to determine the most efficient way to move from point to point. Even so, each drawing takes hours.

As if that wasn’t enough, the software was then reworked to probe positions. Instead of automatically moving the arm to a predetermined point, the arm is manually moved to a location and the data retrieved from the servo encoders is used to determine the position of a probe at the end of the arm. Each point taken in this manner can then be combined to generate a 3D model.

Continue reading “Watch Out Artists, Robots Take Your Job Next” →

Prove Your Geek Cred With A Binary Watch

August 25, 2014 by James Hobson 14 Comments

Binary Wrist Watch

After just one prototype, [Elia] has finished his super awesome Binary Wrist Watch.

He designed the PCB in KiCad, using a template for the PIC he found in a standard library — unfortunately it turns out the SSOP-20 PIC footprint in this library was actually a TSSOP-20. Confusingly enough, there was also a TSSOP-20 footprint in the library. Luckily it’s just a few millimeters off so [Elia] was able to just bend the pins in a bit before reflow soldering it in place.

The trickiest part of the project was actually making the wristband. He tried several different styles before settling on a paracord braid design he found on Instructables.

We especially like his quote at the end of the project:

Although not having worn the watch in the presence of normal humans, I can already guarantee that now everyone will be able to easily identify me as a nerd.

Acceptance is the first step in realizing you have an addiction, right?

[via Dangerous Prototypes]

The Numitron Geekwatch

August 18, 2014 by Matt Terndrup 18 Comments

numitron_uhr_gehause_i

[Johannes] wanted to develop an unusual way to display time on a custom wristwatch. LED’s were too common, and mechanical indicators with small engines were too expansive, but Nixie tubes were just right. His design for the Numitron Geekwatch utilized two boards that were soldered together at a right angle, with a 3D printed enclosure made of semi-transparent PLA.

Future designs of this will improve on the button functionality as well as the housing of the wristwatch to protect the fragile tubes from external forces.

After the break is a video (in German) with [Johannes] going through the steps needed to make one of these of your very own:

Continue reading “The Numitron Geekwatch” →

[Fran] on setting and regulating pocket watches

Retro Time Tech: [Fran] And Pocket Watches

August 15, 2014 by Marsh 16 Comments

Whether you own a pocket watch, want to own one, or just plain think they’re cool, [Fran’s] video on setting and regulating pocket watches provides a comprehensive overview on these beautiful works of mechanical art. After addressing the advantages and disadvantages between stem, lever, and key set watches, [Fran] cracks open her 1928 Illinois to reveal the internals and to demonstrate how to adjust the regulator.

Though she doesn’t dive into a full teardown, there’s plenty of identification and explanation of parts along the way. To slow her watch down a tad, [Fran] needed to turn a very tiny set screw about a quarter of a turn counterclockwise, slowing down the period: an adjustment that requires a fine jewelers screwdriver, a delicate touch, and a lot of patience. Results aren’t immediately discernible, either. It takes a day or two to observe whether the watch now keeps accurate time.

Stick around for the video after the jump, which also includes an in-depth look at a 1904 Elgin watch, its regulator and other key components.

Continue reading “Retro Time Tech: [Fran] And Pocket Watches” →

Reverse Engineering A GPS Watch To Upload Custom Firmware

August 10, 2014 by Mathieu Stephan 25 Comments

Sometimes GPS watches are too good to be left with their stock firmware. [Renaud] opened his Kalenji 300 GPS watch, reverse engineered it in order to upload his own custom firmware.

The first step was to sniff the serial traffic between the PC and the microcontroller when upgrading firmware to understand the protocol and commands used. [Renaud] then opened the watch, figured out what the different test points and components were. He used his buspirate with OpenOCD to extract the existing STM32F103 firmware. The firmware helped him find the proper value to store in a dedicated register for the boot loader to start.

By looking at the disassembly code he also found the SPI LCD initialization sequence and discovered that it uses a controller similar to the ST7571. He finally compiled his own program which uses the u8glib graphics library. Follow us after the break for the demonstration video.

Continue reading “Reverse Engineering A GPS Watch To Upload Custom Firmware” →