Dave Vondle and Jerry O’Leary are making the world’s thinnest watch. I’ve enjoyed watching this project unfold from day 1. Actually, I’ve been watching this project unfold well before that. Dave was my summer intern in 2004. Working with smart, talented interns is always a joy, but every once in a while someone comes along who is truly gifted. I learned so much more from Dave that summer than he learned from me, and I continue to learn from him. Dave moved on to IDEO after college, and was one of the people behind IDEO Labs. It was there that Dave honed his skills as a talented maker who skillfully combines engineering, design, and aesthetic to make some great new devices like this watch.
This is a really really thin watch. Having seen them in person, it is hard to believe that they contain a battery, microcontroller, display, all mounted on a stainless steel carrier. Making the thinnest watch in the world was not easy. If it was, lots of other people would have already done it. Fortunately, Dave Vondle has written an extensive story about what it took to make this on the IDEO Labs blog, where you can see the full details of the process.
The individual components are rather impressive before they’ve been assembled, including the super thin battery from Thinergy. Dave and Jerry have opened an interesting door into thin, body-worn electronics. I can think of all sorts of cool devices like wireless pulse sensors or glucose monitors that could be made vanishingly thin using the lessons learned from this project. This is a great step forward for thin computing! If their nearly complete Kickstarter campaign is any indication, they will be making a lot of watches!
Dave’s work has always been innovative, but not always so beautiful. As a special treat only for MAKE readers, I’ll share with you the fun project that got Dave hired as my intern. He rigged up an animal skeleton with actuators to make an animal-robot hybrid. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, but I knew I wanted to work with the kid who built it!
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