If you liked the original Solder: Time Watch Kit, you’ll love the feature packed Solder: Time II! The first thing you’ll notice about the STII is the 7×20 LED matrix. Not only does this impressive display do a great job showing the time, it also allows for scrolling text and animations. Pressing the buttons on the front activate the display (it’s normally off to conserve power) and let you navigate through the menu system. The watch includes time, date, alarm, and stopwatch functions, as well as demos for scrolling text and animations. The kit comes with the SMT components already soldered, so all you’ll have to do is some simple soldering and assembly which should take less than an hour.
What I like most about this watch (besides the cool display) is that it’s powered by the same ATmega328P microcontroller found in the Arduino Uno. This means that you can hack it as you see fit using the Arduino IDE! Since the programming interface is exposed on the back, you don’t even have to take the watch apart to program it. Simply plug it into an FTDI Friend or similar and you can mod it freely. Want the watch to display your name? No problem. Want to have it display your locker combination? You can do that too! I think I’m going to program mine to spell out the time, just to be different.
The Solder Time II and its younger sibling, are both available right now in the Maker Shed.
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