Pimping my Casio with Oddly Specific Objects' alternate motherboard and firmware

https://blog.jgc.org/2022/10/pimping-my-casio-with-oddly-specific.html

by jgrahamc • 4 years ago

275 48 4 years ago

blog.jgc.org

CobaltFire• 4 years ago

Projects like this, where the community has adopted something so thoroughly and so begins making things for it that are so fully developed, are amazing to me. I love it.

The Thinkpad replacement motherboards fall into a similar category.

csdvrx• 4 years ago

Same: I believe that after a few iterations, the form can come very close to perfection (Casio watch, Thinkpad keyboard) or at least become familiar enough that we may feel sadness if we have to give it up.

Replacing the internals by better ones let you keep the objects you love, increase their features and reduces waste.

butokai• 4 years ago

I wonder if anybody has ever thought about some similar project for e.g. the Nokia 3310 or the iPod

Graziano_M2• 4 years ago

Motherboard is sort of a misnomer. There are no other boards being plugged into it. That said, it's a pretty cool project. Nothing beats the good watch[1], though.

[1] https://github.com/travisgoodspeed/goodwatch

jgrahamc• 4 years ago

There’s the small sensor board plugged into it and the LCD board that attaches to it also.

Graziano_M2• 4 years ago

doh!

ComputerGuru3• 4 years ago

The post demonstrates the temperature sensor as being one (of many?) modular components that can be plugged in, actually.

Though I still agree that does not make a motherboard!

ornornor2• 4 years ago

Pretty cool!

dtx1• 4 years ago

I like Casio watches but i feel there's lots oft Innovation they leave in the table. Especially the higher end square watches are sometimes needlessly incomplete

hiyer• 4 years ago

True - I wish they had a higher end watch with a vibrating alarm, but no luck so far.

bayindirh• 4 years ago

G-Shock series had a model with vibration IIRC.

Update: Yes. It’s GD350.

bherms2• 4 years ago

I love stuff like this... I'd also like to get away from using the term "pimp" to mean to make something cooler. Pimps take advantage of and often force people into sexual slavery. Nothing about that should be glorified and turned into a colloquial term to mean something positive.

dragonmost• 4 years ago

Sometime words can mean multiple things. Pimp to mean cool as been established for atleast a few decades at this point.

blamazon• 4 years ago

Doesn't colloqializing it defang the term? Why should the word be gatekept within the harsh domain it came from rather than allowed to transcend alongside culture? Earnest questions, I don't think about this stuff much.

Apocryphon• 4 years ago

It’s also quite dated slang. Pimp My Ride is decades old now.

singingfish3• 4 years ago

I agree. I use the word “retard” (as in ‘Tony Abbott was the retard we had to have’) from time to time for similar reasons.

bherms2• 4 years ago

Yeah that is a good point I guess. I see this spawned a talk on the word "retarded" as well. Words probably should be allowed to grow and change over time (we see it all the time).

quijoteuniv• 4 years ago

This is my dream! ( when I was 10 years old ) Hope more sensors become available

wzdd• 4 years ago

What would be the most power-efficient way to get data or code into something like this without having to take the back off or add a port? Maybe a light sensor, like the old Timex watches? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Datalink

I guess you could do it with a peltier element and the temperature sensor, if you had a lot of time. :)

ComputerGuru3• 4 years ago

Thanks for sharing the Timex link! I have a soft spot for hybrid analog-digital tech like that but I think a Bluetooth module (if you can figure out the antenna situation) only turned on at a certain watch face (plus a sequence of key presses) is probably the best compromise and shouldn’t be too draining if it’s fully powered down otherwise.

Other radio tech might be an even better option would need a transceiver on the PC side as well, so might not be worth it depending on how often you would be using this feature.

Rebelgecko• 4 years ago

The watch has buttons, right? You could have a "data upload" screen that interprets them as 1s and 0s. I also wonder if you could add Bluetooth to the watch. That might hurt battery life, but maybe not too badly if it's toggleable?

Anunayj• 4 years ago

Honestly I feel like this is the most practical way, Bluetooth modules are readily available in that form factor, just turn it on only after a certain key press on the watch (call it upload mode).

adamweld• 4 years ago

pogo pins?

iancmceachern• 4 years ago

It's this, or similar. This is how fitbit, garmin,etc do it.

ranger207• 4 years ago

In a similar vein, the developer of the Anduril open source flashlight firmware[0][1] once investigated loading settings via light flashed from the phone using the flashlight's LEDs as photodiodes

[0] https://code.launchpad.net/~toykeeper/flashlight-firmware/an... [1] UI diagram: https://budgetlightforum.com/node/76941

awiesenhofer• 4 years ago

What about the back BEING the port? With something like the 1-wire protocol it should be possible, only activate it with say a special button combination to save on battery.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Wire

mmoskal• 4 years ago

1-wire is not hard to implement but unfortunately it requires two wires (they never count ground)

matja• 4 years ago

A microphone and https://github.com/kamalmostafa/minimodem ?

ComputerGuru3• 4 years ago

The web emulator has to be the best part of the project. It makes debugging and testing so much easier!

thot_experiment• 4 years ago

I really wish I could buy one of these without a billion year waitlist. I really want to make a magnetometer daughter board so I can have a mode which displays my magnetic heading.

I love the new colorways casio recently came out with, I had the plain black for years but now I got myself a pink one as well. The only wrist watch worn by both Obama and Osama!

EDIT: oh wow, googling this a bit there's a different project for a replacement motherboard that already has a compass! I guess I might as well just build one myself. [0]

[0] https://github.com/carrotIndustries/pluto

p1mrx• 4 years ago

How would you automatically timesync this watch? Ideally something easier than clamping actuators to the buttons.

kirenida• 4 years ago

On a related note, check out how "syncing" is done on a watch from the opposite side of the price spectrum: https://youtu.be/tybp1Vi0AxY?t=1708

vonwoodson• 4 years ago

The hackability of the Casio watch has earned the F-91W the title of “the sign of al-Qaida” because they are used to make IEDs [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/25/guantanamo-fil...]

So, you know, do what you will with that information. Unless it’s make bombs. Don’t make bombs.

__mharrison__2• 4 years ago

I have an F-91W that I've modded ... by filling it up with olive oil with the purpose of making it water resistant to 1500?! meters. It is so cheap that I can wear it and not worry about destroying it.

I haven't seen this mod before. I'd be all over it if it offered a Python interface.

jiqiren• 4 years ago

Why olive oil? Doesn’t that change the color slightly? Wouldn’t mineral or silicon oil work just as well without a color shift?

ornornor2• 4 years ago

You can’t flavor your emergency pizza or pasta with these.

__mharrison__2• 4 years ago

I didn't have any mineral oil handy. It probably changed the color but it is already LED greenish.

Pimping my Casio with Oddly Specific Objects' alternate motherboard and firmware

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