Fix Broken Watch and Convert It Into IoT Smart Clock Watch

Hey there welcome back to another new and interesting instructable, In this project, I will show you how I made this IoT Smart Clock Watch from an old watch that was totally abandoned and not in working condition.

The watch that I'm talking about here is very old i had these lying on my old cupboard and the inside parts were damaged and not be able to repaired so I thought of an idea to fix this watch and give it a second yet upgraded life.

This watch shows the real-time, date, and month along with elevation and more features can be added too.

This clock is connected to the internet and you can choose any timezone as per your requirement, and there is no need to worry about wrong timings since this clock displays internet time that's the most reliable in terms of accuracy.

For the comparison I have kept the watch and the mobile phone time side to side and you can see the time is same in both devices.

This watch is wearable and I have used a small rechargeable battery with an inbuilt charger to charge the battery on the go with a USB cable from any power source.

You can try building this project if you have the same or almost similar watch, note that all the 3d printed parts are designed considering the size of the watch.

I have given full details on how I made this below, and also in the end I have a video tutorial too.

Supplies

Broken watch

Wemos D1 mini

OLED Module

Toothbrush(or any cleaning brush)

Water in a small cup

Breadboard

Small lithium polymer battery

Tp 4056 charging board

3d printer and slicing software

PLA filaments

Super glue

Few pieces of cables

Soldering iron and lead

Step 1: Design and 3d Printing

I have designed this model using Tinkercad by taking measurements of my watch and then exporting the model to Cura slicer.

You can see the settings that I used when I sliced the model, Since the thing is small and has no hanging parts there is no need for any supports, directly print the model using the PLA filament of your choice.

In my case, I chose to print the backside case with grey since it matches with the body color of the watch and the top part that holds the OLED with red PLA filament.

It will not take much time to print these parts since they are very small and use less material to print.

There is no need for any post-processing because we have not used any rafts or supports at the time of print, Just use the below stl files on your slicer and then the model is good to go.

Step 2: Cleaning the Watch

If anything stays unused for a very long time it will definitely be covered with dust and electronics are allergic to dust, So it's better we will clean it and make it free from such particles.

Start by removing the back panels, Since this was an inexpensive watch there were no screws! Everything was press fit and it was easy to get this disassembled.

After I removed all the electronics that were not in working condition anymore I dipped the watch in a very mild soap solution.

After rinsing it for a couple of minutes I took a brush and gently cleaned the surface of the watch, Again wash it with clean water and allow the watch to dry completely meanwhile we can work on building the circuit.

Step 3: Circuit and Codes

There is nothing much to see about the circuits, We are directly connecting the OLED to the wemos board.

The OLED board has 4 pins and we are connecting these to the D1 mini as follows.

D1 to Scl

D2 to Sda

Vcc to 5v and Gnd to G pin on the board

After this is done connect the board to the breadboard followed by connecting the USB cable to the computer and Wemos D1 Mini.

Copy and paste the below code to your IDE and replace my credentials of wifi with yours, if your wifi is free from password leave the password section blank.

Here for the real time we are using ntppool.org server and you can also use any other as per your needs, If you are new to this i recommend you not to make any changes here and just go ahead with my steps.

Select the proper port and type of board and click on the upload code button and within no time the OLED board will automatically connect to the wifi and start to show the time.

Now we can proceed to simplify the circuit even further by trimming off the pins.

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Step 4: Minimizing the Circuit

The pins from the OLED board as well as from the Wemos board had pre-soldered pins, This will add up to some extra space usage in the system, so I wanted to trim this and simplify.

I will start by desoldering the pins and removing those header pins. do this process with care because if you are not making this process in a neat way there might be issues later.

Do the same step for both the components and solder the wire as shown in the circuit diagram above.

The choice of wire that you are using will help in the flexibility and the quality of the solder strength later on, If you want to add extra layer of strength add a drop of hot glue to the soldered surface.

Step 5: Casing Everything to a Box

Now the best part of this project is casing everything inside a 3d printed case that we made earlier, It took me some time to get all the sizes of the components and then calculate the size of the 3d print case that will be used here.

I will start by gluing the charging board followed by the battery, here make a note to place the board properly to the slot so that when you are charging the pin connects smoothly.

After this is complete we can solder the wires that come from the top case, start by soldering with less amount of lead because overfilling might cause connection issues later on, and also if the excess lead falls to the below circuit there are chances of the project not working in the end.

After all the soldering work is complete you can join the 2 layers into one, normally it will be a press fit, If it is not working for you try adding a drop of super glue.

Step 6: Connecting

Connecting this clock to your smartphone or any other Wi-Fi device is very simple, In my case instead of a router I used a mobile phone with a hotspot connection.

As soon as the hotspot is turned on and the watch is powered on the clock will be loaded automatically and the watch displays the time, elevation, date, and month.

The charge time to fill this battery up is less so you can quickly fill up the battery using any USB power source like powerbank or battery.

There are lots of options to be customized here and in the future, I will possibly be making a much more advanced watch than this, If you have any queries ask in the comments section, Thanks and happy making

Step 7: Video Tutorial

If you think you have missed something then this video is for you, Most of them would have some doubts in the connectivity part don't worry this video has covered them all.

If you need any extra help don't hesitate to comment and surely will help you out.