Retrotechtacular: How A Watch Works

January 23, 2013 by Mike Szczys 31 Comments

Anyone who has ever tried to keep time with an electronic project will have respect for a timepiece that stays accurate over the span of months or more. We think it’s even more respectable when it comes to mechanical watches. This video was made by the Hamilton watch company back in 1949 to explain the basic processes behind a precision mechanical timepiece.

It takes several minutes to get to the meat of the presentation, but we think you’ll find the introduction just as entertaining as the explanation itself. When it does come time to look inside the watch a set of large pieces is used to help illustrate the workings of each part. The clip (which is also embedded after the break) does a great job with these demonstrations, but almost immediately you’ll come to realize the complexity wrapped up in an incredibly tiny package. It goes on to explain the low-friction properties that are brought to the table by the jewel bearings. Enjoy!

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Watch Hacking, One Day At A Time

April 27, 2011 by Mike Nathan 13 Comments

If there is one thing hackers return to time and time again, it is clock/watch hacking. There are always creative ways to tell time, and with several “hackable” wristwatches on the market, there is bound to be no shortage of neat timepiece hacks.

[hudson] from NYC Resistor has decided to take on a fun challenge for the next month revolving around his programmable inPulse watch. Over the upcoming 30 27 days, he will design, program, and publish a watch face for the timepiece. He already has 3 days behind him, and the results are pretty interesting. The concepts are creative and functional, though due to time constraints they sometimes end up a little less polished than he would like.

All of the code is available on his Bitbucket page if you have an inPulse watch and would like to play along or improve on his work.

We think it’s a pretty cool project, and we are eager to see what he produces each day. Stick around to see a quick video showing off one of his 3D watch faces.

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DWex Watch Looks For Future Development

August 30, 2010 by Jakob Griffith 18 Comments

[FlorinC] sent in his DWex Arduino watch, with intentions for it double as an experimenting base. Inspired by the MakerBotWatch, it runs an ATmega328P, DS1337 RTC,and 24 LEDs to display the time. [FlorinC] tells us the (yet to come) case and strap will be similar to Woz’s watch to ensure airport security tackles him. As for experimenting, the PCB contains an ICSP6 and also an FTDI connector for those “other-than-watch purposes”. We’re not all sure what else could be done with a watch; we racked our brains and came up with a compass, but with the source code and Eagle files available maybe you have a better idea?

Robot Boxing With Wrist Watches

August 3, 2010 by Mike Szczys 7 Comments

The classic injection molded plastic Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots has been upgraded to use motion control. The project uses four TI Chronos watches, one on each wrist of both players. In the video after the break we get a good look at the guts of the base unit. We’re quite impressed with the quality craftsmanship that went into retrofitting the plastic bots with four servos each. The electronics include some bells and whistles such as an SD card that records scores and can replay a match via saved inputs. If you’ve got a couple of these watches on hand we’d love to see you port this project and make it a Punchout controller.
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Biopunk Watch: Time, Temperature, Gaming

May 14, 2010 by Mike Szczys 17 Comments

[Matthew Garten] built this watch based on an Arduino. The face is a small color display which allows you to choose to show time in digital, binary, or analog formats. In keeping with the recent trend here on Hackaday he has a glove-based add-on that has temperature sensors in the fingers; for Firefighters or those with nerve damage to their fingers (we’re thinking Darkman). For entertainment in any situation he’s included a trackball and the ability to play breakout or draw in 16-bit color. Details are scarce but apparently he’ll be sharing more soon. For now, watch the video after the break and think of ways to shrink this down into a nice package like the Pong Watch enjoys.

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Coded Entry Using Your Wristwatch

January 21, 2010 by Mike Szczys 24 Comments

[Ziyan] and [Zach] built a door entry system that uses a code entered from your wristwatch. They’re using the TI eZ-430 Chronos that we saw in November. There is a project box mounted over the deadbolt lever. Inside, the wireless fob waits for the watch to connect. When a watch has connected and the correct code is received (using 128 bit encryption) the fob actuates a servo to turn the lock. On the user side of things the code is entered by tapping the watch. The built-in accelerometer picks up these taps and relays them to the door unit.

It’s a heck of a project! Check out their demonstration video after the break. We’d like to see a mechanical option for escaping the apartment in case the door unit fails but otherwise we think this is perfectly executed. We’re looking forward to seeing more projects that tap into this TI hardware.

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InPulse Watch Gets BlackBerry Data Via Bluetooth

October 26, 2009 by Mike Szczys 32 Comments

inPulse-blackberry-watch

[Eric] just told us about the watch he developed that displays info from a BlackBerry via Bluetooth. The watch displays updates, message alerts, incoming call information, and… tells time. Setup and control is handled with the BlackBerry keypad. The device is charged with a micro-USB connection and will last for about four days without a recharge. We’d chalk up the rather long battery life to the use of an OLED display, which will use less energy when a portion of the display is left black.

So why is it here? Well, he’s got a couple of blog posts that detail two of the final prototypes that you might find interesting. What else? Oh yeah, his original prototype used an Arduino with a Nokia 3310 LCD display. For those of you who continually call the Arduino a worthless toy, looks like it’s good enough to use when taking a product to market.