Chronio Is a 3D-Printed, Pebble-Inspired DIY Watch

When you think of a “smartwatch,” you might picture something that you can read text messages with, and perhaps monitor your heart rate or other interesting functions. You also probably picture something that needs to be charged every day, or at least ever few days, to keep it functional.

The 3D-printed Chronio, however, can operate for about half a year on a button cell battery. It uses an ATmega328P chip, and can be programmed like an Arduino. Other electronics include a Maxim DS3231 real-time clock and a 96x96-pixel Sharp Memory LCD.

If this sounds too good to be true, there is one major tradeoff. A large reason why this watch is so efficient is that it doesn’t have the ability to communicate via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, so it can’t check your email or other similar functions. Hey, but it can run a version of Flappy Bird!

You can see more of the project on Hackaday.io page, and find its source code on GitHub.