Do Wristwatches Get Any Better Than A Cuckoo Clock?

There are few better ways of asserting your independent spirit as a hardware hacker than by creating your own special timepiece. Even more so if the timepiece is a watch, particularly in this era of smartwatches. Few home-made timepieces though have come as near to wristwatch Nirvana as the cuckoo clock wristwatch from [Kiyotaka Akasaka], which we would venture to name as having won wristwatches. Nobody will top this one in the field of home-made clocks!

Superlatives aside, this is an electronic cuckoo clock on the wrist, with an LED ring dial and a motorised cuckoo, all clothed in an authentically rustic tiny wooden cuckoo clock case. It communicates via BLE with a smartphone, and even has a sound channel for a cuckoo sound. Frustratingly there’s little in the way of detail about the electronics themselves, but we’re guessing that almost Bluetooth-capable microcontroller could be pressed into service. Take a look at the video below the break.

So we’ve established that it’s a cuckoo clock wristwatch, and that we like it, a lot. It is however not the only novelty cuckoo clock we’ve brought you.

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An Alien-Themed… Cuckoo Clock?

If you are a follower of the sci-fi horror film genre then it is likely that you will be familiar with the Alien series of movies. Images of Sigourney Weaver bearing a significant amount of firepower, or of John Hurt’s chest being rent asunder by an emerging creature will be brought to mind, it’s one of those franchises which seems to have entered the public consciousness.

With the release of another movie in the series fast approaching, [Keith Elliott] resolved to mark the occasion with his own Alien themed tribute. What, you might ponder, could he choose? Surely there must be plenty of iconic moments in the films that could provide fertile ground for a tribute project!

So  presumably after a significant period of reflection, he’s built an Alien themed cuckoo clock. Something of an off-the-wall choice, you might say, but he persevered with it. The main body of the clock is the torso and head of an unfortunate human crew member, the face of the clock is formed by an alien facehugger on his face, and the cuckoo is not a bird in the manner of the Alpine originals, but a chest-bursting alien that issues forth from the torso.

There is a video, which we’ve posted below. Perhaps the chestburster action needs a little more spontaneity and to be a little less rhythmic, but we’ll leave it to you to decide whether it is inspired or merely kitsch.

Continue reading “An Alien-Themed… Cuckoo Clock?”