A little while ago my brother gave me a mechanical watch. Up until then I usually wore a calculator watch, which made me look even nerdier than I actually am. However, looking at my shiny new watch made me wonder how it worked, and so my adventure into the murky hobby of watchmaking began…

I read up on watchmaking, and I learned a couple things about watches like what a jewel is and means. However, I’m very much a learn-by-doing kind of a guy so I ordered some cheap watches off ebay. I managed to destroy every one, the carnage would have made a hardened soldier cry.

Unfortunately, there is no place I know of where you can buy unassembled watch movements (the movement is the gears, wheels, etc. all assembled into one amazing device), so I’m stuck with making a watch out of existing parts. I would have really liked to assemble a movement myself, but I suppose the time will come.

I have a movement, case, dial, and set of hands on their way. Supposedly, installing a movement into a case is a really hard process, but I have to learn somehow, and the amount of online documentation on watchmaking is minimal at best. Consider this my watchmaking war diary, entry number 1.

Finally, after weeks of outsourced programming and design, the new BW Science Labs has been unveiled. The site isn’t 100% functional yet, I still have a lot of files to upload and products to add which I should hopefully finish doing by the end of this week.

Have you ever heard of a magazine called Servo? If not, Servo is a very popular magazine on robotics and engineering, where I now have my own monthly column. My first article will be published in this upcoming issue, be sure to pick up a copy or subscribe!

Make magazine just launched a new project called the Makers’ Market, where Makers can sell their products via their site. I’m happy to report that BW Science Labs’s application was accepted, and you can now buy some of our kits off the Makers’ Market website. MM is a fantastic way to support Make and Makers, I highly recommend you check it out!

In the coming weeks you’ll be seeing a lot of new products on BW Science Labs, Apple iPad beware!

Well, 2010 is here, and I’m back from a restful Christmas break.

2009 was an awesome year to say the least. Our success included being featured on the MAKE magazine blog 3 times, Boing Boing video, and a variety of other sites. In addition, BW Science Labs won Sun Microsystems’s (yes, that Sun, the creator of JAVA) and the Institute for the Future’s international innovation competition, the Digital Open. Not only did this give BW Science Labs quite a bit of media attention, but I got a real nice laptop (and some other stuff) out of it!

A couple months ago I got an offer by a publishing company to write a chapter of a book they were publishing on technology and its affects on society and the modern world. I just heard back from them, and they’re almost ready to publish it, and I’ll get 10 copies soon.

We’ve sold a ton of kits through our store over the past few weeks, and I got a lot of feedback that they are being put together by families and young engineers. If you’re curios as to how many we’re selling honestly it varies from week to week, however I always try and set a minimum of 2 per week (excluding holiday breaks because I can’t ship them if I’m out of town) and so far this goal has been surpassed nearly every week.

Over the break I drafted 10 new kit ideas, and I’m actively prototyping 2 of them, soldering iron in hand. The 1st I’m working on are a beginner GPS kit, where you put together a complete, handheld GPS locator that gives you your coordinates in real time. This is tricky, as the GPS module I’m working with has several wires, none of them labeled, so I’ll have to keep working on it very slowly. The 2nd is a more advanced robot kit, a sort of sequel to our popular Vivus the robot kit. I have selected an IR sensor, servo for a moving head, body, and so on. To keep costs down, I’m using a 18 pin microcontroller (as opposed to 28+) which means I’ll have to program it in as few lines of code as possible.

As far as site design goes, I just posted a job on Elance to hire a developer to redo the site. The new site will have a beautifully integrated store, web applications, and more.

I want the theme of 2010 to be “watch me”. I plan on surpassing all expectations and making BW Science Labs grow more rapidly than ever.

Watch me!

Merry Christmas everyone. It sounds like a lot of people have gotten the Vivus the Robot kit for Christmas and are enjoying it.

I’m working on redoing the BW Science Labs website, and will be moving from Blogger to the WordPress platform to integrate the store and blog. Unfortunately this also involves the less fun search for a good web host, artist, and so on. However, once the site is done it’ll be really cool.

I’ve survived the first day of final exams, 2 down and 4 more to go!

Here’s an interesting project called The Lumen, a 3D display that adds depth to 2D images. The neatest part is how they get each little pixel up and down; they use a wires made of “shape memory allow” that expand when heated and shrink when cooled.

[or watch this video here]

Good look to everyone taking final exams!