It’s time to… analyze and render

The analysis

Before I started building the clock, there were a few things to consider:

  1. wood to use;
  2. the size of the entire clock;
  3. power supply to the circuit;
  4. PIC to use;
  5. the shape of the strap and how to hold the parts together;
  6. how to use the LEDs to display the hours and minutes;
  7. the closure of the strap;
  8. the cover on the back of the watch.

I admit that the analysis phase was not easy.

As I proceeded with the construction of the watch I had to change a few things because I realized that some ideas that I had assumed at first could not be realized.
For example, I would have liked that the circuit was covered by a thin layer of plexiglass but this was not possible because once assembled, the PIC was too high (due to an error during the milling) and therefore did not leave the space to insert the cover.

However, after documenting myself, I chose to use beech wood for both the case and the strap because among all those I saw it seemed to me the most suitable (both in terms of resistance and workability) among those that I could find.

For the PIC instead I chose the model 16f688 because as size and PIN number it was perfect to be inserted in a relatively small circuit and above all it has a built-in oscillator.

I used the DIP 14 version to give the watch a more “vintage” look.

So, 3… 2… 1… go!

The renders

First of all I had to create the drawings of the watch (at least for the electronics part), in order to give a concrete form to my ideas.
So I prepared some renderings:

In this way I immediately noticed that the LEDs I initially wanted to be 12 for the hours and 60 for the minutes (for space reasons) would never be there. So I had to reduce the number: 12 LEDs for the hours and 12 for the minutes (one every 5 minutes).

I also realized that the tracks on the circuit would be very close to each other. So I had to order bits that would allow me to work in tight spaces:

And I finally went for 60° bits.

The strap renders are missing because at the beginning I didn’t have very clear ideas about this part and when I arrived at the time of carving it I preferred not to use the CNC but a band saw with which I made the various parts of the strap that I then assembled… but we’ll talk about this in the next article!! 😁