Analog and LCD watches are both useful designs, but ultimately are mainstream timepieces. Using a binary watch is an easy way to set one’s self apart as a tech enthusiast, while impressing your hacker friends to boot.
One such build comes to us from [vishalsoniindia], and it uses a single bare PCB which is designed to mate directly to a traditional watch strap. The single tactile button on board is used to activate the watch, showing the current time in hours and minutes in binary-coded decimal on the watch’s LEDs. Long-pressing the button puts the watch in setting mode to correct the time as needed.
The watch relies on an ATtiny85 microcontroller, a lightweight and compact design which is more than powerful enough to run a simple watch. It’s paired with a 74HC595 shift register to run all the LEDs from a minimum number of pins, and there’s also a TP4056 charging circuit on board to keep the lithium-polymer battery topped off.
A project like this is a great way to learn all manner of basic electronics skills, from PCB design, to SMD soldering and even working with basic logic parts like shift registers. As a bonus, you get a cool watch out of it to boot.
We’ve seen some similar designs over the years, as varied as the hackers that build them. Video after the break.
the centre of which has a one-way clutch, which transmits the torque onwards to the output gear. The input side of the clutch also drives an identical unit, which picks up rotations in the opposite direct, and also drives the same larger output gear. So simple, and watching this super-sized device in operation really gives you an appreciation of how elegant such mechanisms are. Could it be useful in other applications? How about converting wind power to mechanically pump water in remote locations? Let us know your thoughts in the comments down below!
