A Pocket Watch with Atomic Accuracy and Victorian Vibes

Watches, wall clocks, and alarm clocks have become rare sights in recent years. These devices used to be everywhere, but now that everyone has a phone with them 24/7, what’s the point? When the little rectangle you already carry around is regularly synchronized with an atomic clock, why bother with a dedicated timepiece that is bound to drift and needs to be manually corrected every few months?

Because they're cool, that’s why! You know what’s even cooler than a nice wristwatch? A pocket watch. What tops that, you ask? According to Math Campbell, that would be a sci-fi-style pocket watch. After seeing what Campbell has created, I’d have to agree. Sure, pocket watches may have been out of style for a century or so, but as they say: What's old is new again.

The watch was built around Waveshare’s ESP32-S3 Development Board with a 1.28-inch round display built-in. That’s it as far as the electronics are concerned. What? Were you expecting more? It only has to tell time and display it in an interesting, sci-fi movie-inspired style, and that doesn’t take a lot.

Next, Campbell developed the firmware for the device. A user interface was created with the help of LVGL that looks just right on the 466×466 AMOLED screen. It is capable of displaying the time, performing network time updates, showing the weather forecast, and tracking the tides. In the future, Campbell plans to pull in iOS notifications.

So far, so good — but a bare circuit board isn’t going to make for a great pocket watch. To complete the look, Campbell designed a custom case and had it 3D printed in stainless steel. It looks nice, but maybe not quite perfect. To get it just right, Campbell plans to remake the case in sterling silver in the near future.