So I've started yet another project.  I've actually had this idea for awhile after seeing this website.  Basically, this is a watch, with LEDs to indicate the seconds, minutes and hours.  It is designed to eventually fit in a pocket watch case.  Right now I'm looking at something around 50 mm, which is a little larger than most pocket watches, but I have been able to find some (and some are even bigger).  

The original watch that I linked to just told time and had an alarm on it.  It is a very clever implementation of taking some old tech and building a new tech twist on it.  The reason for calling this the "Seeker Watch" though is that I wanted to do a little more with it.  So a GPS unit and magnetometer is being added.  There are some other things I may implement as well, but as one can imagine, there is not a lot of room in a pocket watch :)

Processor - Microchip PIC 18F87J90

136 LEDs for time/pointing

3 additional LEDs for GPS/Debug/AM-PM

GPS Unit - GP2106 GR10/MN1010 (module from Sparkfun)

Magnetometer - HMC6343 (expensive but fully tilt compensated which was important here)

More details to come later

Many people of heard of geocaching.  Its where people "hide" a cache and then post the coordinates.  People then take their GPS units with them and "find" the cache.  Then there is reverse geocaching.  This is where you carry a device and the device itself is the cache, but it will not open until you get to the correct location.  

The Seeker Watch is a bit of a hybrid and is actually based on the Archeology profession in World of Warcraft.  In WoW, you put down your survey equipment (a telescope with a light next to it) and the telescope points to where the item you want to dig up is located.  In addition the light next to it flashes red, yellow or green to indicate how close you are to the item.  The Seeker Watch uses that same prinicipal.  A cache can be uploaded to it and then it will point to where it is and the color of the LED indicates how close you are.  It's like a normal geocache except you can not see the GPS data, just the pointing and the approximation on how close you are.

I have been doing some research into this project for the last couple of months now.  This last weekend I've been doing a lot with the actual circuit board to use.  Most of my major components have been selected based on my research.  Now I am working on getting everything together on the PCB to make sure everything will fit.  The image at the top is the status so far.  I do not have all the components yet and I have not even begun routing the board yet.  But hopefully soon.  At least the difficult part of getting all the LEDs on there and lined up is done.

The project is centered around a Microchip PIC 18F87J90.  This processor was choosen as it has plenty of I/O pins, a USART so I can talk to the GPS, MSSP for I2C communiction to the magnetometer and a RTC built in.  While I could pull time from the GPS, I decieded on the RTC option.  The main reason being power.  The GPS pulls a lot of power, so unless it is the "game" mode it will remain off.  However, we can use the GPS to set the time.

The LEDs are using a fairly standard multiplex scheme.  With 132 plus a few extra LEDs, multiplexing was a must.  I looked into Charlieplexing, which could have further reduced the pins needed, but there are a few issues Charlieplexing that many LEDs.

Like my PIC Lantern project, I will probably post everything on github.  I say probably as I'm not sure yet if I will open source this or not.  But knowing myself, I probably will :)  Anyways, as progress is made I will try to update here as often as I can.