With the advent of smartwatches, the line between analog and digital has become a little blurred. After all, the display allows you to create the illusion of a mechanical watch, and only upon closer inspection can you tell the difference. However, these two extreme methods are not the only ways to tell time. If you look carefully enough, you'll find other interesting designs that utilize a combination of pattern and light. These need to be deciphered and converted to normal time. numbers. This unique watch project is less extreme and presents a more familiar face, but it does so using a medium you wouldn't expect from an electronic watch.
Designer: Armin Binzus
Analog clocks use physical moving parts to show the passage of time, but there's no hard and fast rule that they have to have three long bars or lines. Some minimalist designs even remove all but four numbers from the dial, reducing the “hands” to circular shapes. This leaves a little room for experimentation, like this DIY electronics project that not only uses things like the aforementioned dots, but uses those dots in liquid form.
This may come as a bit of a surprise, considering we're often told to keep liquids away from electronic devices, but the droplets used in this interesting design are actually polar liquids. This means that they can become electrically charged and in this case can move around the surface precisely because of that electrical charge. The technical principle behind this technique is called 'electrowetting', which allows liquid movement to be induced by changing the electric field on a particular surface.
In the Droplet Watch, changes in the electric field occur through three concentric circles of 60 electrodes, representing 60 “ticks” on the watch face. As the electrodes are charged or discharged, the droplets move around along the lanes between these circles, just like the hands of a clock. This is a complex process with plenty of room for error, but it's certainly interesting to watch as the dot of liquid moves around the clock, briefly leaving a trail before catching up with the rest of the blob. is.
Droplet Watch only uses power when moving liquid, which puts it on par with E Ink displays. Sadly, it's not a practical design, at least for a watch that moves frequently, as liquid can accidentally spill out. And since many modern clocks and clocks have digital screens, you can achieve the same visual effect with little to no effort.