thallia
Project Hype: Binary Wristwatch
Announcing….my newest project!
I’ve always loved binary since I learned it, it’s so simple and intuitive to me. I found this binary wristwatch on a German website.
I wanted to buy it right away, but shipping was a chunk of money, as was the watch itself. That was around a year ago.
I re-stumbled upon the link recently and was inspired to design and build my own binary wristwatch.
I built my first mock-circuit based off of Gector’s binary clock, to make sure I had the theory right, then ran his code alongside it.
Left top LEDs: Hours ^
Left bottom LEDs: Minutes ^
From the side:
https://github.com/CaptainGector/arduinoBinaryClock/blob/master/binaryClock.ino
His code was slightly wonky with my setup. The Hours displayed fine, but the Minutes were off. It took me a while to realize why. When he set up his clock, he had a display like so:
Hours1: 10
Hours2: 0
Minutes1: 30
Minutes2: 7
Seconds1: 40
Seconds2: 9
Displayed Time: 10:37:49
Where he had two rows of minutes. In my setup, I’m going for mimicking the wristwatch setup, where there’s only one row of minutes and one row of hours.
Hours: 8 4 2 1 Minutes: 32 16 8 4 2 1 Displayed time: 12:06
Knowing this, I’m going to have to fiddle with his C code.
Because I’m using a full sized ESP32 for the mock circuit, I ordered a baby ESP32 off of eBay.
The ESP32-S is now out of stock, so I got mine just in time :) Though I derped a little bit in the thinking-things-through process.
Because I only ordered the ESP32-S, I’m going to have to design my own PCB to use it. This is slightly inconvenient because I’ve never done such a thing, but it’s also a really good opportunity to learn how, so I figure it’ll be alright to exchange a fast building process for a learning experience.
List of internals:
- Surface mount components (resistors, 74HC595 shift registers, ESP32-S, tactile buttons)
- Power (I’m thinking a coin cell battery? That should be an easy and small thing to manage.)
- Flat top 3mm LEDs
I’m also going to need to design and 3D print a case for this thing, which means learning fusion360 or SolidWorks.
I’m brainstorming the following for the design of the outside container/attachments:
- comfortable, maybe slightly arched on the wrist
- engraved with a circuit design on top
- slim, not bulky. Just big enough to fit the PCB and slip right over the LEDs.
- woven leather or woven wires to attach to the wrist
I’ll update as I continue work on this project, learning EagleCAD/KiCAD, fusion360, and much more. :)
{thallia}