The watch project
Thu 23 November 2023
My quest at the moment is to try to make a mechanical watch. Specifically I want to make
the movement. I'm not interested in buying a bunch of parts and assembling a watch.
I'm also not interested in cloning a standard movement, I have my own design in mind. Read more
Interesting features of John Harrison's sea clocks
Sun 12 November 2023
I recently got to see John Harrison's sea clocks at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich.
I recommend visiting if you get the chance. This post is about some of the interesting things
I observed. Read more
The Douzieme gauge
Mon 2 October 2023
In this post I'm going to explain what a Douzieme gauge is, show you how I made one myself,
and propose some alternative designs for higher precision. Read more
A short pendulum with a long period
Sat 8 May 2021
The period of a pendulum is proportional to the square root of its length: to double the period,
the pendulum needs to become 4x as long. But actually physics has no idea how long your pendulum is,
the thing that really matters is the radius of the arc that the centre of mass travels
through. There's no inherent reason that we wouldn't be able to increase the radius of this arc
without increasing the height of the pendulum. Read more
Bangle.js open source hackable smart watch: first impressions
Wed 17 March 2021
Bangle.js is an open source hackable smart watch running the Espruino
JavaScript interpreter. It includes BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy), heartrate monitor, temperature sensor, 3-axis accelerometer, GPS, compass, and touchscreen (ish), and
is designed to be easy to program. Read more