Pimping my Casio with Oddly Specific Objects' alternate motherboard and firmware | Hacker News Reader

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

blog.jgc.org

275 pointsjgrahamc48 comments

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.

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.

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

https://hackaday.com/category/ipod-hacks/

Lots of entries there.

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

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. :)

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

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.

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

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

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?

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).

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

pogo pins?

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

As the parent of a "severely retarded" (quoted from the first IEP report in 2009) child, I say who the hell cares if you use that word. I have to admit I find it kind of funny and use it all the time.

Commence downvoting, retards.

EDIT: Actually got upvotes! My heart sings

I downvoted because you said "as a parent". I completely disagree with the idea being the parent of a disabled child gives you special license to say words like that. You're not disabled just because your kid is.

I like and upvoted your comment! I think you’re absolutely right. It is a mild satire on the “my lived experience“ fad. Obviously being the parent of a severely retarded child gives me no special moral power. I will continue making crude jokes like this because even though I’m in my 60s apparently my sense of humor is still 15. That and I don’t like to give any kind of derogatory language special power of of its own.

I can’t wait till you hear my exceptionally insensitive jokes about white people, especially fat bald white men like me. Because, you know, it’s my lived experience…

Seriously, though, thank you for explaining your downvote.

My goal is to disociate the word "retard" with disability in its entirety.

It’s a good goal

I'm autistic, and often call myself retarded intentionally. :P

We're all a little retarded.

I used to make my colleage laugh because after a while of frustration I would often mumble or louder to myself "oh you fucking retard"

So so true!

I hate it that words become unacceptable just over time and we all have to adapt our language.

What could be more reasonable than describing someone as retarded? The word means "delayed or held back in terms of progress or development". No one would argue with that as a non-derogatory and accurate label, so why has the word fallen from grace?

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).

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

It was dated back then. "Pimping" used like that goes back to the 70s. I was there.

Pretty cool!

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

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

doh!

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!

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

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

G-Shock series had a model with vibration IIRC.

Update: Yes. It’s GD350.

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