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BigTime Watch Kit

sku: KIT-10870 RoHS Compliant OSHW

Description: It's official, SparkFun has made the Big Time, and now you can make it too! The BigTime watch kit is a geekishly stylish digital watch with a velcro watch-band and a slick acrylic enclosure. If it seems familiar, that's because it's essentially our open-source branch from the SpikenzieLabs' Solder:Time kit. The heart of the kit is the much venerated ATMega328 using a 32kHz clock-source to keep time. To check the time, just press the button on the side of the watch and it pops up on a 4-digit 7-segment LED display. Thanks to some low-level hackery, the ATMega is running at super low power and should get an estimated 2 years of run time on a single CR2032 coin cell!

The BigTime is a through-hole kit with a low parts-count, so it makes a great project for beginning solderers. After you've finished soldering together the PCB, simply stack the acrylic pieces around it and screw them together with the included hex-head screws. Once that's done, pop in the coin-cell battery and go show off your nerd bling!

Did we mention that the watch kit is super hackable? An FTDI header is broken out to the side of the board and the watch-firmware is running on top of a bootloader! This means that all you need to do to add your own code is to open up Arduino or Wiring and select "Arduino Pro or Pro Mini 3.3V/8MHz w/ ATmega328" as your board.

Kit Includes:

Features:

  • Very hackable ATMega328-based kit with Arduino bootloader
  • All through-hole components
  • Estimated 2-year battery life
  • Laser-cut acrylic enclosure
  • Large, easy-to-read display
  • Adjustable velcro watch-band

Documents:

Pricing

In stock

29.95
26.96
23.96

62 in stock

price
10-99
100+



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images are CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

ASCII version


Comments 16 comments

  • Papa Smurf | about 2 months ago 1

    is it written in the code, so that I can keep the time on ?

    • rsp | about 2 months ago 1

      Yes, you can change the display on-time in the code; but with the display continuously on the battery would only last for a few hours.

      As a timepiece, expect the accuracy to be poor. The crystal oscillator will drift due to battery voltage and temperature changes, plus the crystal load capacitors have been omitted so it may run a little fast.

      • Nate | about 2 months ago 2

        BigTime doesn’t have atomic accuracy by any means but we’ve found it to be shockingly accurate. Atmel has done a pretty good job designing their RTC oscillator. Last I checked their app notes recommended against load caps on the 32kHz crystal on the ATmega series.

    • Nate | about 2 months ago 1

      There’s a flag at the top of the code called ‘always_on’ that can be set to true if you want to keep the watch on all the time. rsp is correct – the battery won’t last long so external power would be a good thing.

      • EvilGenius121 | about 2 weeks ago 1

        Hey Nate- is it possible to get just the PCB and acrylic for this? I already have the atmega, display, and pretty much everything except the battery holder.

  • Peter | about 2 months ago 1

    Awesome watch – but next time PLEASE breakout the unused pins so that we can do fun stuff with them.

    • JohnGalt | about 2 months ago 1

      I second breaking out the unused pins. A stealthy wearable arduino would be super cool. A lower power LCD display would be good as well.

      • RobertC. | about 2 months ago 1

        there just wasn’t enough room for this revision. maybe in the future?

        • Kevin Vermeer | about 2 months ago 1

          There wasn’t enough room because you used ginormous through-hole components everywhere. That may be a comfy norm for some people, but surface-mount really isn’t that hard. You’d have plenty of room with even an easily solderable 0.8mm QFP microcontroller, an LCD screen would alleviate the power problems, and SMD components like the resistor and caps.

          Unfortunately, then you’d have to call it the “NormalTime,” which isn’t nearly as cool a name.

  • antithesis | about 2 months ago * 1

    Files for the acrylic case design please? Any recommended accelerometers to trigger the time display?

    Also, here are the steps I followed to put it together, with a slight variation on the part of assembling the case which made it easier for me:

    http://polychronis.gr/projects/playing-with-sparkfuns-bigtime-watch-kit/

    • Nate | about 2 months ago 1

      Sorry for the delay! We posted the PDF and SVG files for the laser cut parts above. The entire project is open source hardware so we’ll stick a CC-SA-3.0 license on the files shortly.

  • roychook | about 2 months ago * 1

    Wait is it using the 32khz crystal as the system oscillator and does that mean i cant just use the schematic and load the correct boot loader because you guys have configured the chip specifically to run on this mode

    To put in context im building a device that would be controlling the display and needed to be very low power. So my question is, would I be able to buy the same cpu from digikey burn that arduino bootloader to the atmega328 and use the same components without having sparkfun configure the chip to use the oscillator at 32khz?

  • MattTheGeek | about a month ago * 1

    ATMega is running at super low power and should get an estimated 2 years of run time on a single CR2032 coin cell!

    Using a MSP430 device, you can make it run for 25.88 years! (0.1% active, 99.9% sleep) or 6.35 years (1% active, 99% sleep)

    Note: Using MCU Only.

    My suggestion: Make a extreme low power version.

    Replace the MCU with a MSP430 value (or FRAM) series chip, ditch the LED 7 segment display and instead use a 4 (or more) digit LCD panel. Also consider adding a solar panel (with rechargeable coin cell battery or super capacitor) for almost indefinite run time.

    Then you have a awesome watch.

  • ryansw | last month 1

    I would love to win the Google+ giveaway, but I am < 18, so cannot join. I hope replying here will still count. My favorite products would be the lab coat and the hoodie. Not really electronic, but really show the Spark Fun Spirit. I also, obviously, like the Big Time Watch Kit