FLORA NeoGeo watch

Bored of same regular watches, then make your own LED chunky timepiece by using FLORA and GPS module. This flora watch innovation is the result of experiments based on FLORA series of Adafruit. Becky Stern in collaboration with Tyler Cooper has developed this FLORA NeoGeo watch. The watch seems little chunky because of heavy equipment used but it always feels great to have something innovative on wrist.

GPS module used here would tell time with a ring of pixels, it means that the watch has timekeeping of one LED for hours and one for minutes, GPS navigation that will customize your waypoint in the provided Arduino sketch and compass modes. Isn’t this funky?? Undoubtedly it seems to be bulky but it will be equipped with a leather cuff that would hold the circuit and would hide the battery. Next the circuit sandwich is the face of the watch, and the tactile switch used is to make a mode selector.

Well, the project requires soldering and precision crafting and it is already assumed that, people do have knowledge about FLORA, FLORA Wearable GPS, FLORA Accelerometer and Adafruit NeoPixel Überguide. Tutorial are also available on the website for each of the function.

The equipment needed for this project are FLORA main board, NeoPixel ring, FLORA Wearable Ultimate GPS Module, FLORA Accelerometer/Compass Sensor – LSM303, Tactile switch, Tiny lipoly battery with charger, Leather watch cuff, Small scrap of fabric, E6000 craft adhesive, Binder clips, Thin-gauge stranded wire, Double-stick foam tape and Black gaffer tape

The article is perfectly described with a Circuit diagram and each component is connected to FLORA main board including GPS, accelerometer tactile switches and NeoPixel ring. Then the circuit is assembled by soldering small stranded wires to electronics components, on the back side of the particular board. GPS is the first thing that gets attached to the FLORA main board with the help of NeoPixel ring that help position the round GPS module in the center back of FLORA.

Once the circuit is finished, watch is assembled, where the watch circuit is placed by the small strap on a leather watch cuff. The coding Of the FLORA NeoGeo Watch is very easy to use and it has three modes that is Watch Mode, Navigation Mode and Compass Mode. The standard Adafruit GPS Library, a Time Library, the LSM303 Compass Module Library, and the FLORA Pixel Library is used for coding.

The watch shows time, when it fetches from GPS satellites, therefore it needs to get a GPS fix by directly seeing the sky. It can take some time to first acquire a GPS fix and you can also attach an optional backup battery to the GPS to keep its fix. Further, the watch is not waterproof and therefore be cautious and take it off and power it down if you get stuck in the rain and even while doing the dishes, etc.

the detailed version of the watch is available on the website of Adafruit along with video. All the best.