Pimp Star

I've allways had a knack for wrist watches. They are cheap little devices packed with technology. Just as our mobile phones are, albeit in a less cheaper form. Unfortunately, lots of the watch functionality has been taken over by our mobile phones, cause the watch has a screen that can hardly be expanded, and having limited input functionalities. Which left the watch with basic hour-telling functionalities.

Watch makers have responded to this trend by creating watches in specific designs, giving the watch some sort of exclusivity, targeting specific end user groups. Tokyo Flash is a Japanese shop which creates wrist watches with the purpose of making hour-reading seemingly as daunting as possible. This resulted in handless wrist watches, including LED based watches which tell the time in binary form, having a form factor raising from a metallic plate with drilled holes in it, to metallic cylinders with moving LEDs.

I bought myself the Pimp Star Performer, a 44LED based watch with 4 columns each indicating a portion of the time. The watch lights up one number in each column in a Matrix like animation to tell the time. For example: 1-2-5-3 would be 12:53. Some fun stuff is present like a PM indicator in the shape of a martini glass, as PM stands for drinking time.

Peter De Scrhrijver Wed, 01/13/2010 - 18:02

If you want to hack your own watch, you might be interested in http://focus.ti.com/docs/toolsw/folders/print/ez430-chronos.html