Custom Watch Tells Time In Binary

For some tech fans, a geeky watch is a smartwatch like the new Apple Watch or even a Pebble smartwatch. For others a geeky time pieces needs to tell time in some difficult to read way that leaves the uninitiated wondering how it works. There are certainly plenty of watches that are made in a factory that fall into that latter category.

Some geeks are more industrious and rather than wearing a store bought watch, they roll their own. This is exactly what a geek has done in creating his custom watch that tells time in binary. The watch runs a PIC18F24J11 microcontroller.

The builder chose that microcontroller because it has an integrated real-time clock and calendar source. It also has enough pins to run LEDs without needing to use a shift register. Integrated deep sleep mode also appealed to decrease overall power consumption and made the small watch last longer on a charge.

There are three LEDs on the watch with two green LEDs that toggle to show if time or date is displayed. The tip row of red LEDs handles the hour or month. The bottom row of blue LEDs shows the minutes or day of month. A pair of push buttons are used to cycle between modes on the watch. The header on top of the board is paired with an extra header on the bottom that allows the use of a ribbon cable for the watchband. All the details you need to build your own watch are on GitHub.

SOURCE: Hackaday