panahon!
"panahon!" is a vibrating time bracelet. It vibrates once approximately every five minutes in order to aid the wearer in maintaining an awareness of the passing of time. The goal is to improve the productivity of the wearer - every buzz means that five minutes have passed. Panahon is a Tagalog word meaning time, era, period of time, age, etcetera.
panahon! was inspired by a similar product I saw on the internet. At the time, this product was sold out, not to mention expensive. Why not make my own?
This was the first printed circuit board I ever made. It is fun to look back and see how far I have come!
First, a through-hole prototype. I used an Atmel ATtiny45 to keep track of time and control the vibrating motor. An Arduino Uno proved useful as an AVR programmer. To squeeze out as much battery-life as possible, the MCU stays in low-power sleep most of the time, exploiting watchdog timer to wake, increment a counter, and actuate the motor if enough time has passed.
It works! Then I used Fritzing to design a circuit board and had some boards made. In order to reduce the size, I decided to give surface mounted components a try. My first experience with surface mount turned out quite well! I also designed and 3D printed an enclosure on my Mini Kossel 3D printer to protect it, with some scrap leather as a strap.Â
The battery has shown to last between 1 and 2 months! Here it is inside the enclosure. panahon! turned out better than I could have hoped!
