Watches

Do self build watches get the love in here?

This is my second build, I wanted a more relaxed every day watch with good readability as my eyesight is starting to go. I also fancied a bronze case and will let the patina form naturally. Any scratches, marks or dings will, I think, add character.

Inside is a Seiko nh36 to give me some options later if decide I need day/date.

Thought I'd made a mistake with the white hands but now really like them. It's nothing special or expensive but it meets my needs perfectly.

Inherited from my Opa whose memorial service I'm attending today. Has kind of an old man vibe to it, but I think it looks really sharp.

It was absolutely filthy when I got it. I spent about two hours de-gunking it, and what I assume is gold plating on the bracelet has almost entirely worn off. But I've enjoyed wearing it the last couple days. 🙂

Timex Expedition Field Mini(26mm) TW4B12000JT on kid.

Seiko SBPK003 solar quartz GMT on dad.

Seiko SNK807K2 didn't last 2 week on kiddos wrist.

Just got it in! I had to sign up for a drawing as they were only going to sell a limited amount of them (not sure how many, but a different method than the past NASA editions). I was selected and just got it in today. Super cool!

Two of the watches – NASA-issued Omega Speedmasters – have been on the Moon, while the other has stayed on the ground like a loser.

“See, you need an odd number (of watches) in case there is a discrepancy so you can sort out which one is what,” he explained in an interview posted to his website.

Freshly serviced and ready for summer.

This is my great grandfather's Elgin pocketwatch circa 1917. My dad gave it to me when I took an interest in watch repair and I repaired this from a slightly rusted and non-working state to at the very least able to run, but the time keeping is not great. It is losing ~50s a day, amplitude is 310*, and beat error is 5.5. I'm not at the point where I feel comfortable messing with the balance and regulating the pocket watch. I am just happy that it runs. I don't have a before picture, but I cleaned up a lot of green rust from part of the dial and case where there was a crack in the crystal and water must have gotten in. I replaced the mainspring because it was domed like an ice cream cone and gave all the parts a nice cleaning and lubricating.

He did serve in WWI in the 307th, but I lean towards thinking that this was waiting for him at home because the condition it was in was pretty good given the age. I also have his WWI map which he did have with him while he was in France, and I display together with the pocketwatch.

Just got this bad boy! New summer watch

I prefer that this GS still has a Seiko branding. It was dropped from the later iterations.

From losing 60 seconds daily, to +3s daily and smooth, closely spaced, solid near horizontal line/graph.

Local watchmaker took a day to service. Far cry from 3 months and having it sent back to Seiko Japan, when I approached local distributor a decade back.

Got myself Seiko 5 field watch as a starter, the cheapest automatic. Thought I would be ok with minute numbers being bigger than hour numbers but no. Everytime I looked, had to do some mental gymnastics for a second. After a month of this decided to switch it to no numbers at all. Today received the dial, switched it over. Omg, this is so much easier to read.

I love the design of this watch, and would love to buy one but can't seem to find this exact model still for sale anywhere. In particular the dial texture and color look great with the bright white hands.

Got this nearly 3 years ago and it’s been a reliable companion. The most legible watch I’ve ever owned and as big as I can get away with! Highly recommend this if you’re after a no-frills sport watch

Watch bracelet resizing tool finally arrived, managed to right size without losing a (oh-so-teeny-fiddly) collar.

Still getting used to additional substancial weight on wrists.

Heya! I thought I'd mention that I've been doing a bunch of development on the optical Timex Datalink watches! I have been carefully sniffing data from the original Timex software with a logic analyzer, and have fully reverse engineered every Datalink protocol, the serial Notebook Adapter, and even the CRT syncing graphics! This means that every Datalink device, including every Timex and Motorola watch, all PDAs, and the funny e-BRAIN talking toy is supported!

For those that aren't familiar, the Timex Datalink is a watch that was introduced in 1994 that is essentially a small PDA on your wrist. The early models (supported by this software) have an optical sensor on the top of the face that receives data via visible light.

The original data transfer method involves drawing patterns of lines on a CRT monitor for the watch to receive with the optical sensor. CRTs use electron beams that draw scan lines one-by-one from top to bottom, then it returns to the top and repeats for the next frame. This means that the electron guns turn on when its drawing a white line, and and turn off when its drawing the black background. This produces flashing light as the graphics are drawn, which is ultimately received by the optical sensor and decoded by the Timex Datalink device.

For laptop users, Timex also offered the Datalink Notebook Adapter. Instead of using a CRT monitor, the Notebook Adapter simply flashed a single LED light. This adapter is fully supported by the Timex Datalink software, and sends the same data as a CRT.

However, Notebook Adapters are rare and expensive now, so I reverse-engineered one! Here's my timex_datalink_client Ruby library communicating with my DIY Datalink Notebook Adapter to emit data to a Timex Datalink watch!

And if you want to try the reverse-engineered CRT graphics, I got you covered! I reverse-engineered that, too!

As a fun tidbit, these watches are flight certified by NASA and is one of four watches qualified by NASA for space travel! Here's a shot of James H. Newman wearing a Datalink watch on the Space Shuttle for STS-88!

Here is my Ruby library with all options for all watches reverse-engineered into a tidy model-based syntax!

• https://github.com/synthead/timex_datalink_client

Here is a Notebook Adapter emulator that is fully compatible with all Timex software on old and new machines, and also works with my library too!

• https://github.com/synthead/timex-datalink-arduino

And if you have an anchor that happens to contain an electron beam and wanna try it, here's my library for drawing graphics to a CRT to transfer data!

• https://github.com/synthead/timex_datalink_crt

This has all been done over months of careful effort with lots of VMs, Pentium machines, Windows 98SE, logic analyzers, and solving data puzzles little by little. On July 4th, 2023, I'm proud to announce that I have reverse-engineered every Datalink device with 100% feature compatibility! This is definitely a passion project by all means, and I thought I'd pop in and share this passion with y'all!

Enjoy!