14 DAY TRIAL // If you are looking to purchase a smartwatch today, you have plenty of options to choose from. You can either pick up a rectangular, round or curved model and you can even have your pick at what features the timepiece takes advantage of.
Some watches can do notifications, others can help you keep track of your fitness routine.
Some can even do both, while letting you place phone calls from your wrist. But if you’re no longer impressed by these capabilities and want something that will really stand out from the crowd, you might want to look somewhere else other than the mainstream market.
Do you like the cyberpunk movement? Then you'll love this watch
That is exactly what engineer and blogger J.M De Cristofaro (aka “johngineer”) set out to do when he started work on the ChronodeVFD, which is a cyberpunk-themed wristwatch.
The DIY project has been in development for a couple of months and has been built around an IVL2-7/5 VFD display tube.
The original plan was to use several of these tubes to build a standard desk clock, but after fiddling with the parts for a while, De Cristofaro realized he could build a wristwatch too.
The creator of the device uses the IVL2-7/5 VFD display tube because of its flat properties, as opposed to the round tubes like the IV-18 which would have made the wrist-bound wearable much chunkier.
The watch is quite small, measuring just 1.25 x 2.25 inches / 31 x 57 mm. The device utilizes a nominal 60 mA filament current at 2.4V, but it’s still operable at approximately 35 mAh with 1.2V.
Another cool aspect of the IVL2-7/5 is that unlike most VFD tubes out there, it has no opaque backing behind the digits, which makes the rear part completely transparent.
The ChronodeVFD is not a smartwatch per se
The watch is more of an experimental DIY project so it doesn't have a lot of functionalities.
Actually, we can’t even call it a smartwatch per se. It can show you the time, but apart from that, it won’t connect to the smartphone in your pocket or relay notifications when you receive a phone call or a text message. It will also offer a scarce battery life of 6 to 10 hours, so you’ll have to recharge it regularly.
Nevertheless, it’s a pretty neat piece of technology and its creator details most aspects of how he built it, in the hopes of inspiring others to do the same.
Maybe at some point, more “intelligent” functionalities would be added to the rooster, but for the time being this cyberpunk is quite limited.
