Pimping my Casio with Oddly Specific Objects' alternate motherboard and firmware | Hacker News Reader

Pimping my Casio with Oddly Specific Objects' alternate motherboard and firmware

blog.jgc.org

27 pointsthunderbong8 comments

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This submission based on a comment on today's "Taking a $15 Casio F91W 5km underwater" submission:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42887561

Previous submission (275 points by jgrahamc on Oct 15, 2022 | 48 comments):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33214607

Amusing comment on previous submission tying the two submissions together:

> I have an F-91W that I've modded ... by filling it up with olive oil with the purpose of making it water resistant to 1500?! meters. It is so cheap that I can wear it and not worry about destroying it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33221087

Wow, this is such a cool hack. Taking a Casio F-91W—literally the indestructible watch—and giving it a microcontroller brain while keeping that retro LCD? Pure genius. The pluggable sensor module (starting with a thermometer!) is what sold me. Now I’m daydreaming about slapping on an air quality sensor, an NFC chip, or… honestly, why not a tiny radiation detector?

But flashing firmware via USB on a Casio? That’s the kind of absurdly cool detail that makes me love hardware tinkering. It’s like giving your grandpa’s old pickup truck a Tesla battery but keeping the patina.

Huge props for keeping it open and hackable.

This reads exactly like it was written by Claude. Was it? It's the exact same writing style.

Not passing any judgement on this specific comment, but I've seen a fair bit of what you describe in other comment threads on HN as of late, and I can't help but wonder — why? I get that some people bot on Reddit because you can sell the accounts to spammers and such later, but here? I just don't get why anyone would do it on HN, but it's definitely a thing.

I got lazy and ran a list of points through a language model. The key is to give it direction, like "be succinct".

(NB Just did this)

Your other comments seem human though!

Huh. Fun to see this on HN again (all to all the Casio love). That watch isn't what I wear daily. Instead, I have a Casio Lineage (this model: https://www.casio.com/europe/watches/casio/product.LCW-M170D...) which I love for its lack of connectedness, that it keeps itself charged from the sun, and sets itself from DCF77.

there's a newer version out now https://www.crowdsupply.com/oddly-specific-objects/sensor-wa...

im excited about the MEMS motion sensor addon - sleep tracking and step counts on an f91-w with year long battery would be wild

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